


Unfortunate Circumstances: A Compendium

by magicspacehole



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Humor, One Shot Collection, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 23,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26554090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicspacehole/pseuds/magicspacehole
Summary: A series of one-shots recounting the many possible disasters and disappointments that might befall Tom Riddle. Prompts from Reddit, lovingly provided, lovingly answered.
Comments: 34
Kudos: 27





	1. Design Flaw

Response to u/Jon_Riptide on r/HPfanfiction

_In which Tom Riddle realizes that the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets was very, very poorly designed._

* * *

The entrance to the Chamber was an ancient secret. It held a gift - a singular gift from the great Ancestor to his descendants, shrouded by time and the sacred magic of his bloodline.

The entrance to the Chamber was privileged information, its location carefully hidden in a way that allowed it to avoid detection by even the most determined of Hogwarts headmasters.

The entrance to the Chamber was in a fucking girls' bathroom.

The first time he found it, Tom was elated. Here, finally, was proof of his lineage and status, waiting patiently for him to simply speak the words and open it.

It had been nighttime. The castle was quiet, not a soul in sight. He'd said the words in Parseltongue, the bathroom sink had descended like an eerie, unfortunately designed carnival ride, and there it was. The rush of excitement he felt when the opening appeared was perhaps the greatest moment of his life.

The second time he attempted to visit the Chamber, two girls were sitting on the sink, giggling and applying makeup.

He hadn't been expecting anyone to be out roaming the castle at three in the morning (besides himself, of course) and upon opening the door to the bathroom he froze. The girls looked at him like he was mad.

"What are you doing?" one of them demanded.

"What are _you_ doing?" he stuttered.

He left before they could answer, and did not return to the site for weeks, hoping they would forget they saw him.

It only got worse from there.

At one point he'd gone in to discover an older girl, a Ravenclaw, who was standing on the window sill and whispering to the ceiling.

When she heard the door close, she turned around and glared at him, her hand grasping some kind of latch.

"What?" she demanded.

"Nothing," Tom said.

She climbed down from the window and stood there, staring at him.

He stared back, unsure of what to do.

"There's nothing up there," she said after a while.

"I didn't say there was."

"I didn't say you said there was. And there isn't. Ravenclaw doesn't have a secret tower, so don't-"

"Secret tower?"

She fell silent.

They backed away from each other slowly, wordlessly promising never to speak of whatever either of them might have been doing.

The fourth time Tom attempted to enter the Chamber he was considerably more careful. He watched the bathroom for over an hour, counting the number of girls going in and out like a compulsive stalker.

When he was absolutely sure it was empty, he slipped in quietly and locked the door behind him.

The room smelled like death, and he briefly wondered if the Basilisk had left a kill somewhere nearby.

Then he heard it.

He was halfway to the sink when a brief, low moan sounded from one of the stalls, followed by a most unfortunate series of noises.

At the same time, someone started banging on the locked door.

He was trapped.

With all the grace of an erumpet he slid clumsily into a stall and locked it just as the bathroom door burst open.

"-know why someone would lock it," a young girl was saying.

"I know. It's odd," said another.

The other occupied stall emitted a second ominous, dignity-shattering moan, and the girls stopped talking abruptly.

After a while - a long, eternal, universe-ending moment in which Tom questioned every life decision he'd ever made - the girls said, "are you okay in there?"

The unmistakable voice of Professor Merrythought called out from the other stall. "Fine, girls, just fine. Bloody pumpkin juice," she explained.

Tom yearned desperately for the sweet, merciful release of death.

He did not return to the Chamber for the rest of the term, nor did he have any inclination to do so.


	2. Unexpected

Response to u/Crazycatgirl16 on r/HPfanfiction

_Good things come in small packages. And sometimes, terrifying, psychotic things do too._

* * *

The process of recruitment had been slow going at first, but with Tom's ingenuity and charm, it was quickly gaining ground.

He'd sent messages to all of the usual nefarious and questionable strands of society: the racist purebloods, hardened criminals, politicians...

That was one group. He also attempted contact with the Giants, some of Azkaban's last remaining human wardens, and other unsavory characters.

Lestrange had promised a large assortment of new recruits that night, and he waited patiently at the back of the pub for them to arrive, practicing his best "join me because you love me but also I'll kill you if you don't" speech in his head.

When Lestrange finally did arrive, Tom was pleased; his servant had not disappointed.

Lestrange led the new followers to the back room and approached Tom, giving a small bow, which Tom knew was mostly for show. Then he nodded at the crowd behind him. "Eager recruits, my Lord, each and every one."

"We'll see," said Tom. He approached the assembly, which was comprised mostly of young adults and a few nervous teenagers.

Lestrange started to introduce them. "Those are the Rowle twins," he said, referring to two burly-looking boys with black hair. "And that's Thomas Gray and Pericles Fawley." He gestured to a very serious young man and the tall man-child beside him. "Old pureblood families."

Someone in the group cleared their throat loudly enough for the entire pub to hear.

Lestrange sighed. "And that's... Suzie."

He pointed to the back of the group, where a short, blond woman stood on her toes trying to see above the crowd of men and boys. Upon being introduced, she forced her way to the front, stopping directly in front of Tom.

And she stared at him.

And stared some more.

It was like being watched by a lion that was about to pounce - a short, overeager lion.

"Suzie, is it?" he said, unnerved by her proximity and wide, rapidly blinking eyes.

"Yes, sir," she responded quickly, blushing to the point that it looked painful. "I mean- yes, Lord."

Tom tried to back away ever so slightly. "Well, welcome to the-"

"Thank you, my Lord," Suzie blurted out.

The other recruits threw disdainful looks at her, trying to distance themselves lest they be associated with her blatant and embarrassing fanaticism.

She did not care at all.

"I will be your most faithful servant, my Lord," she assured him while looking like a teenage girl that had just unabashedly put a picture of him on her bedroom wall.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"Twenty-three, my Lord." Her voice was sickly sweet. It made Tom want to curse her into silence. And he would have, too, if it wasn't for his desperate need to build up his following.

He sat down at the table and they followed, watching his every move. Wary. Unsure. Just as he'd hoped.

"Our goal is a simple one, friends. But reaching that goal will be the most difficult experience of your lives. Rest assured, you will be rewarded for your service."

"When do we get to kill Muggles?" shouted the tall man-child from the back. The crowd shushed him.

Tom sighed. "What we are doing is far more important and far more complicated than killing Muggles. And murder, well... It's not that easy. Have any of you ever even used the Killing Curse?"

"No," the crowd muttered, many of them looking away. Then-

"Yes, my Lord!"

They all turned to stare at Suzie.

"Excuse me?" Lestrange said.

"Yes, I've used the Killing Curse. Twice, actually," she explained, cheerful as ever.

Silence.

Tom blinked stupidly, then asked, "when...? Sorry, I mean when did you-"

"A couple weeks ago."

She seemed emboldened by his inquiry, and without prompting she launched into a story that could only be described as a meandering, chaotic mix of gruesome, horrific details and fluffy pre-teen gossip.

"-and they both refused to believe that I wanted to be a Death Eater, so I showed them I could be one." She shrugged and smiled.

More silence.

"Can I see your wand, Suzie?" Tom asked, quietly but firmly.

"Of course!" she sang, and handed it to him.

"Thank you. We'll just... put that over there for now." He set it down on the other side of the table.

She didn't seem to care.


	3. Troll

Response to u/Amarcanthe on r/HPfanfiction

_Prompt: "It is a late night of 1993, Dumbledore is on his way to grab a snack in the Kitchens... and upon hearing noises in Myrtle's bathroom, he finds a small battered book, laying in a puddle of water. Curious, he goes back to his office and decides to read what sort of things Tom Riddle may have written in his youth, only to find the pages empty. If not for a compulsion, an amused Dumbledore finds himself writing to a young Voldemort."_

* * *

"Greetings!" he wrote, fully aware of the futility and utter recklessness of this endeavor and not caring in the least.

The words disappeared immediately. It was an impressive bit of magic. Ominous. He respected the work (begrudgingly).

"Hello," the book responded.

He wondered if the object could tell who he was. He assumed not, given that there was usually a limit to the degree of sentience with which an object could be imbued, but then Tom always had a penchant for taking the scientific aspects of magic and blowing them all to hell in spectacular, dramatic ways.

"What is your name?" he wrote.

"My name is Tom Riddle."

Interesting.

"Hello, Tom Riddle. Do you know where you are?"

"I assume I am at Hogwarts."

"That is correct."

"Who are you?"

Albus thought for a moment, then threw all caution (or what little he had left) to the wind. "I am Albus Dumbledore," he wrote in his best curly script.

The book did not respond.

To add insult to injury he added, "I am the Headmaster of Hogwarts." Capital "H" included for effect.

The book began to write, but the scrawl was unreadable. It erased itself several times before finally forming a proper word.

"Prat."

"Is that any way to talk to your Headmaster?" Albus wrote with a smile.

"What year is it, prat?"

"1993."

"Well in that case, I assume I have long since graduated from Hogwarts - top of my class, no doubt - and have gone on to conquer the world in some brilliant and impressive way."

"Not quite," said Albus.

A pause. Then, "what happened?"

Albus wrote slowly. "You graduated from Hogwarts, yes, but after that you disappeared. It wasn't until years later that you returned asking for a teaching position. I turned you down. Naturally."

"Naturally. Teaching? What on earth would possess me? I assume I asked for the Defense Against the Dark Arts job?"

"No."

"Sorry?"

"As it turned out, you had spent your time abroad, studying all manner of flora and fauna, becoming well known as one of the most knowledgeable naturalists in the Western world. You had a particular penchant for plants, and had decided-"

"Don't say it-"

"-to take up-"

"No-"

"Herbology."

The book responded with a series of angry scribbles and then caught fire.


	4. Julie

Response to u/dratnon on r/HPfanfiction

_In which Diary Tom realizes he wasn't the one controlling the Basilisk all along._

* * *

Tom could feel - _feel_ \- himself becoming real. It was as if he was being poured into a pitcher, if that pitcher were existence, and he the great breath of life that was the soul.

Or something.

As the seconds went by, he became clearer. More solid. He could hold the boy's wand firmly in his hand now, and he could step onto the cold, stone ground. He could once again sense the never-ending passage of time, prodding his very real body, stubbornly, to age.

He felt the rush of fate pulling him forward. He knew what to do. Harry Potter had to die.

"Let's match the powers of Lord Voldemort," he said to Harry, "Heir of Salazar Slytherin, against famous Harry Potter, and the best weapons Dumbledore can give him..."

Fate, apparently, had other ideas.

Tom turned to the great statue of his ancestor and spoke the ancient words-

Or, at least, he tried to. The hissing sound of his Parseltongue had inexplicably morphed into a strange gurgling noise.

He cleared his throat quietly and tried again. " _Open_ ," he demanded.

"OPEN..." the Chamber echoed back, very much in English.

Harry took his chance and ran toward Ginny, throwing his sword aside and dropping onto the ground beside her, pleading with her to wake up.

Unnerved, Tom tried several more times to call the Basilisk forward, but his words had no effect. His mind raced to think of another plan.

While Harry tried to revive the girl, he picked up the diary and threw it into the shadows to keep it from being compromised until he could obtain his long-awaited independence.

Then, without warning, his body exploded in pain. It was like a rope yanking him around the middle, pulling him ruthlessly back toward nonexistence.

Ginny was waking up.

Tom stumbled over to Harry and picked up the sword, determined to strike the boy down _somehow_ before he lost all ability to do so.

But before he could bring the sword down on Harry's head, Ginny opened her eyes. She coughed, choked, then grunted.

And with flawless execution she said, " _Basilisk_."

Harry and Tom both whirled around, shielding their eyes from what they knew was coming, as the great stone mouth of Salazar Slytherin opened.

Tom smiled in triumph as his dear Basilisk fell out in coils, all sixty feet of it, coming to his aid at last.

The snake reared its fearsome head, a mess of teeth and pain and poison-

-and stopped.

It was silent.

" _Attack_ ," Tom said in very proper British English that was not Parseltongue at all, to his annoyance.

The snake did not move.

Tom removed his hand from his eyes and slowly, carefully, stole a glance at the Basilisk.

Its eyes were closed. Purposely closed. Almost _politely_ so.

Harry noticed this too, and immediately tried to wrestle control of the snake from whomever the hell was actually controlling it.

" _Listen to me_ ," said Harry in his harsh, childlike approximation of Parseltongue.

But the beast did not move for Harry, either. They knew it could hear them, even if it couldn't see who was talking, and the use of Parseltongue, at least on Harry's part, should have been evident.

But the Basilisk ignored it.

Then a small, quiet voice spoke from the ground beside them.

"She's not going to help you anymore," said Ginny, trying and failing in her weakness to sit up properly.

Harry and Tom stared at her.

She gave Tom a nasty look. "She says you were mean to her."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You were bossy."

Tom snorted. "Bossy? I _own_ her. She is _my_ weapon. I didn't even know she was female," he added indifferently.

The Basilisk hissed and raised its tail threateningly. Tom backed away a few paces.

"Her name is Julie," Ginny stated in a warm voice, like she was showing off her newest pet to her friends. An ancient, murderous, and apparently overly-sensitive pet.

"Ginny," Harry pleaded, "tell the Basilisk to listen to me. Tell it to destroy the Diary."

"Don't you dare, you ridiculous prat," Tom warned.

Ginny merely shook her head. The Basilisk made a long hissing sound that echoed throughout the Chamber. "No," Ginny told them in translation, "she doesn't want to do that."

Tom stood in disbelief. And then it hit him. He'd only ever opened the Chamber and summoned the beast while he was possessing _Ginny_. Controlling _Ginny_. Telling _her_ what to do.

Was it possible?

Had he lost the ability to speak the sacred language of his ancestor?

As Ginny and the Basilisk hissed at each other in what sounded like friendly banter, Tom realized he'd never had the ability in the first place.

It was always her.

Infuriated, he rounded on the Basilisk. "I am the Heir of Slytherin, you bloody beast, and you will obey me!" he screamed.

The Basilisk sniffed in indignation and lowered itself to the ground beside its - _her_ \- new best friend.

Ginny climbed onto the Basilisk's head and they rode out of the Chamber together, leaving Harry and Tom standing there, listening to Ginny's laughter echoing through the pipes.


	5. Singularly Assured Destruction

Response to u/Mestrehunter on r/HPfanfiction

_Tom Riddle's plans for his fifth year at Hogwarts don't so much fall apart as implode into a black hole of failure. And it's all Potter's fault._

_Who transfers into Hogwarts, anyway? No one transfers into Hogwarts. Who is this little shit?_

* * *

"You still haven't told us what the surprise is," said Nott.

They were sitting in Slughorn's office, lounging in chairs by the fire, the very picture of Slytherin arrogance.

Tom smiled. It was a wide, satisfied smile, one he only reserved for his cleverest, most successful schemes. "You'll see soon enough," he responded.

The others saw Tom's glee and exchanged brief, worried looks. The happier he was about a plan, the angrier he tended to be when they somehow mucked it up for him.

He turned to Avery. "Did you get the list I asked for?"

Avery hesitated, then nodded and handed him a folded piece of parchment. "Every muggleborn and mudblood in the school. Even the ones that lie about it. It was right where you said it'd be, in Dippet's files."

"Perfect." Tom perused the list, but stopped when he noticed Avery's face. "What?"

"It's just... Well..." Avery shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

" _What_?"

"It's just... your name's on there, too."

"So?"

He'd responded too quickly, and ended up sounding like an indignant child. He took a breath to calm himself, then said, "I may not be a pureblood, but I _am_ the Heir of Slytherin. My blood is the last thing that should be in question." He stared at each one of them in turn, daring them to speak out against him.

The group nodded in agreement, or placation, or loyalty. One of those things.

Tom stood and the others did the same. A general with his officers. "Just wait, boys. This year we are going to change Hogwarts forever."

They had their doubts.

* * *

Tom had visited the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets three times now.

He was getting better and better at infiltrating the girls' bathroom where the entrance was hidden, activating it, and disappearing in a matter of minutes before anyone noticed.

This time, he was going to attempt to let the beast loose elsewhere in the castle. He wanted to let it get its bearings, find its way, so that it could attack when and where it needed to.

He had just lowered himself into the pipe that led to the Chamber when he thought he heard a door close quietly. Paranoid, he made his way out of the pipe, returned the sink to its proper place, and left the bathroom. In the corridor, he glanced around for any sign of activity. There were several girls conversing near an archway, a blond boy practicing Charms out in the courtyard, and a dark-haired boy walking slowly away toward the Great Hall.

The dark-haired boy glanced back at Tom, almost as if he knew he was being watched, and smiled. It was an odd smile. A _knowing_ smile. He took quick note of the boy's appearance so that he could be monitored later: he wore round glasses and had an odd, angular mark on his forehead.

He would not be hard to find.

* * *

Tom did not see the dark-haired boy again for days. He could not find him anywhere. The only place he hadn't looked was the Slytherin common room, and though he did not catch the boy's outfit to tell his house, he knew he would have been informed, as a Prefect, of any new Slytherins.

...which there couldn't have been, because "new" Slytherins didn't happen. Hogwarts didn't get "new" students in the middle of the year.

The boy must have been hiding out in his dormitory. Probably a Hufflepuff.

One evening, he was making his way up the wide stone steps toward the Great Hall, deep in thought, when he heard a voice - the last voice he cared to hear at that moment - call out from behind him.

"Ah, Tom!"

It was Dumbledore. He was climbing up the steps, the dark-haired little shit Tom had been looking for following closely behind.

Tom plastered a very obviously fake smile on his face. "Sir?" he responded.

"Tom, this is Harry Potter. Harry is a transfer student. Harry, Tom will be your Prefect."

Harry Potter gave a small wave and a smile that Tom could have sworn held a subtle hint of mockery. He fought back the urge to curse the boy. "Wait," he said suddenly, " _Prefect_? He's in _my_ house?"

Dumbledore nodded in characteristically benign Dumbledore fashion. "Indeed. Harry has been sorted into Slytherin."

Potter held his hand out for Tom to shake. "It's nice to meet-"

"From where?" Tom blurted out.

"Sorry?"

He looked pointedly at Potter, then at Dumbledore. "From _where_ did he transfer?"

Dumbledore seemed suspicious of Tom's questions, but answered all the same. "Ilvermorny."

"Ilvermorny? He doesn't sound very American."

"I'm not," Potter said simply, not bothering to explain and, from what Tom could tell, doing so on purpose just to annoy him.

There was a perfectly good chance, he knew, that he was being paranoid, and that this boy had no idea about the Chamber, was not following him around, and did not mock him with every smile.

But Tom Riddle was Tom Riddle.

"Tom, why don't you walk with Harry to the dungeons?" Dumbledore suggested casually, patting Potter on the back and pushing him forward. "It's almost past curfew."

"Of course, sir," Tom muttered through gritted teeth. He turned around and descended the stairs toward the dungeons, not bothering to look back to see if Potter was keeping up.

Unfortunately, he was.

"So you're Riddle?" Potter said, marching alongside Tom.

"Yes."

"Wow. You're pretty famous around here."

"Really?" he responded with indifference.

"Well, everyone in our house seems to be convinced you're the cleverest person in the school-"

Tom stopped abruptly and Potter nearly ran into him. "What the bloody hell do you mean 'convinced?'"

Potter shrugged. "I mean it's a bit obvious, isn't it? You're a charmer. You probably get most of what you want through persuasion. I'm not criticizing. It's an impressive skill. I have it too."

"You have _what_ too?'

Potter shrugged again, to Tom's annoyance. "Charm, I suppose. If I say it myself, I've always been able to charm the people I needed." He seemed to smirk at his own wit.

Tom narrowed his eyes and leaned in close to Potter, his face like stone. "I don't know what you're talking about," he growled, his voice low and steady.

"I'm just saying," Potter remarked, "don't get too comfortable. You never know when someone new might come along and unseat you. Popularity is a funny thing."

"Is that a threat?" Tom demanded, his hand closing around the wand in his pocket.

"Do _you_ think it's a threat?"

Tom did not respond.

Potter smiled, a perfect, friendly, infuriating monstrosity of a smile, and continued on toward the dungeons, leaving Tom standing there by himself.

Before he got too far, however, he looked back and said, "you may want to do something about that anger, Riddle. It can't be healthy."

Tom threw a curse at him just as he rounded the corner, laughing hysterically.

* * *

It wasn't until weeks later, when Tom became so wrapped up in his own plans, that he realized he hadn't heard from his friends in quite a while.

There had been no intelligence, no status reports, no new recruits. Nothing.

So when he found them one evening, lounging in the Slytherin common room, he made to confront them. Harshly.

There was a large group sitting on the black sofas by the fire, the flames giving their faces an eerie red glow. And Potter was right in the middle, surrounded by Tom's best lieutenants - Avery, Lestrange, Nott, Rosier, even the short one whose name he could never remember. They spoke in hushed voices, heads close together.

"Am I interrupting something?" he said loudly, pleased by the looks of shock on their faces.

Well, all faces but one.

"Not at all," said Potter. "We were just reading." He held up a black leather book that looked painfully familiar.

"Is that my diary?" Tom demanded, his horror turning to rage in an instant.

Potter shrugged. "I'm not sure. I don't know whose-"

"IT'S GOT MY NAME ON IT, YOU IDIOT!" Tom yelled.

The group of boys backed away when they saw that he had his wand out. But Potter did not move.

Instead, he kept his eyes on Tom's wand, backed up slowly towards the fire, and held the book over the flames.

Tom hesitated. He needed that book. He had _plans_ for that book.

It was as if Potter _knew_.

He lowered his wand. "Give it to me, Potter. This doesn't have to end in a fight."

"You're right," the boy conceded, "but too often, so many things do."

He threw the book into the fire.

* * *

Tom had cursed Potter so thoroughly that he ended up in the hospital wing, and Tom's carefully crafted reputation for being a perfect, well-behaved student lay in tatters.

Had he been there a second longer, and not been taken down by his former friends, he'd have used the Killing Curse. Of that he was completely sure.

Over the course of a single night he'd gone from having a strong suspicion about Potter to being completely and overwhelmingly convinced that Potter was only at Hogwarts to ruin his life.

Was it competition? Was he really just another ambitious Slytherin hoping to "unseat" him (whatever that meant)?

No. There was something else going on. He could feel it. Potter knew too much about him. Kept targeting all of his most important assets - his friends, his diary, his reputation...

There was even a chance he knew about the Chamber.

_The Chamber_.

Tom hurried down to the second floor girls' bathroom, his wand at the ready. He didn't even bother to check that anyone else was in there before he opened the entrance and slid down into the network of pipes below.

As soon as he entered the Chamber proper he saw it.

The ancient Basilisk lay motionless on the wet stone floor, the last great remnant of Salazar Slytherin's once-eternal legacy, limp and cold and rotting.

A small steel sword was sticking out of its head.

Tom yelled in fury.

That annoying little shit had done it. He'd found the Chamber, made his way inside, and somehow killed a massive, deadly Basilisk without being petrified by its stare or poisoned by its venom.

This meant that Potter knew _exactly_ what to expect from a Basilisk before he decided to kill one.

Tom knew where he needed to go next.

* * *

He pleaded with Dumbledore. "Look, I know you don't trust me. You've never liked me. But I'm telling the truth. I swear to you, that boy is dangerous. He's not what you think he is. He's... he's..."

He stopped talking when he saw the look on Dumbledore's face. It was the same knowing look Potter had given him when they'd first met.

"You know exactly what he is, don't you?" Tom muttered, unable to hide the fury in his voice.

"Of course," Dumbledore said simply.

"Then tell me. What is he? Who is he?"

"He is a student."

"And?"

Dumbledore smiled vaguely. "And?"

" _And_? What is he doing here?"

"Learning, one would assume."

Tom turned on the spot without a word and made to leave the Deputy Headmaster's office.

But Dumbledore called after him. "Riddle?"

"What?" he spat.

"You may want to do something about that anger. It can't be healthy."


	6. Stuck

Response to u/cairnschaos on r/HPfanfiction

_In which a sentient diary manifests itself into a real human boy, only to find that he is trapped inside the Chamber of Secrets. And he's not alone._

* * *

Somewhere, in the infinite randomness of the universe, there is a world where all of Tom Riddle's schemes go according to plan.

This was not that world.

His chance had come and gone. He'd been so close, so near the point of physical manifestation that he could _taste_ it.

And then the little prat Potter, bane of his existence, had to fuck it all up.

After all that had happened - all the manipulation, the violence, the excitement - he'd ended up back where he'd started: in a book.

He hated Potter. Seethed at the thought of him. But it was nothing compared to the hatred he felt for his creator.

That smug bastard was the real reason the Tom in the diary had failed.

You can't just give something sentience and walk away from it, expecting it to behave and think exactly as you instruct it to.

But that was what the real Tom Riddle had done when he turned the diary into a horcrux. It was just another step in his master plan, another tool in the box. Before he abandoned it, he never once cared to ask the diary what it thought.

Maybe the diary didn't like the plan.

Maybe it was indifferent to the plight of mudbloods.

Maybe it didn't feel like being a sentient, leather-bound repository for teenage angst and rage, forced to sit by itself for fifty years, ignored and unloved except for the occasional erotic doodle it was forced to endure by some idiot named Lucius.

In truth, being a book wasn't bad - at least while he was _in_ the book. He didn't age. He didn't feel anything. Had no concerns whatsoever.

It was when the real world bled through that he started to long for it, crave it, become obsessed with it. Anytime someone wrote to him, telling him what was happening in a reality he couldn't see, he cursed his creator and vowed to gain his freedom through any means necessary.

But there would be no more chances now. Potter had made sure of that.

So he sat there (not really sitting because there wasn't really a "there" in which to sit, him being merely the concept of a person, existing in a conceptual space) and he pouted.

Then he realized something - a sudden, brilliant realization that changed absolutely everything: he could still think.

The diary had been destroyed, and yet he was still there, or somewhere, able to ruminate on his unfortunate existence.

This meant that whatever piece of soul resided within him was still alive.

_He was still alive_.

As if it could hear his thoughts, the conceptual space around him shuddered.

Carefully, and with determination, he leaned into the nonexistent, metaphysical idea of a page.

Something pushed back.

He leaned a bit further.

And further.

And further, until he was leaving the real, actual pages altogether, becoming once more exposed to the cold, moldy air of the Chamber.

He rolled onto the floor and lay on his back, staring - with real eyes - up at the ceiling, the wetness of the ground seeping into his real, actual clothes.

He attempted to stand. It was different from when he had faced Potter, being, at the time, only in a transient state and able to glide over the ground like fog. This time, he could feel the muscles working in his legs.

And they hurt.

But he managed. Standing up straight, he basked in the sweet, sweet chaos of sounds and sights and sensations that were life, breathing deep, drinking it all in, then coughing quite violently after realizing the entire Chamber smelled like sewage and dead snake.

Ideas filled his head. He could sneak up into the castle. Maybe even eat something. Then sneak himself out into Britain at large, where he could search for his creator and pay him back for his good deeds.

One thing at a time. He had to find a way out of the Chamber.

It was darker than he remembered. He felt along the wall for the ladder that led up and into the pipes above, but it was nowhere to be found.

"Stuck?" came a low voice out of the shadows.

Tom whirled around clumsily, trying to find the source of the voice, his newly-formed heart racing. "Who are you?" he yelled into the dark. "Show yourself!"

Slowly, dramatically, like a top-billed actor making his way onstage the first night of his show, a man stepped forward.

Well, a sort-of man. Man-ish. He was transparent, had a slight glow, and was dressed like a colonial officer from the eighteenth century, minus the red coat.

"You're a ghost," Tom stated.

"Well done," it said sarcastically, looking him up and down in an appraising sort of way. "And you, my friend, do _not_ appear to be a ghost. Am I correct?"

"Yes. Who are you?"

"Corvinus Gaunt," the man said with an unnecessary flourish.

"Gaunt?" The name was, of course, one with which he was intimately, painfully familiar.

"That's what I said, child. I know who you are, of course."

"You do?"

Corvinus nodded. "Yes. You're Tom Riddle. The... copy, not the original."

Tom rolled his eyes. "I am as real as anyone else. At least I can _touch_ things."

"Quite rude," mumbled Corvinus, indignant. "You don't exactly fit the role of pure, unadulterated human either, you know. But then I expect nothing less than egocentric ignorance from the Heir of Slytherin," he said with a bow, his words dripping with eighteenth-century sarcasm.

"Have you been here this whole time?" Tom asked.

Corvinus shrugged. "I come and go."

"So you know what happened here? With the Basilisk? With... me?"

"Oh, yes. Quite a rowdy show, I must say."

Tom became filled with rage, and could feel his blood pumping for the first time in fifty years. "You sat there, watching your descendant try and fail to unleash the Basilisk on the mudbloods, watched him be defeated by a twelve-year-old _boy_ , and you did nothing?"

"That is correct," said Corvinus.

Tom clenched his jaw, trying not to shout out loud the stream of obscenities running through his head. "May-I-ask-why?"

Corvinus thought for a moment. Then he smiled. "We Heirs of Slytherin must find our own paths to victory, each and every one of us."

"I see you succeeded," Tom spat.

"Cheeky. But let's be honest, we are self-centered shabbaroons, the lot of us."

"What the fuck is a shabbaroon?"

Corvinus ignored him. "Sooo," he sang, "any idea how you're going to get out of here, now that you have a shiny new body?"

"Can't you find me a way out?"

"'Course I could..."

"...but you won't."

"Correct. Muddle on, young one."

Tom spent hours climbing through pipes, trying to recall from memories fifty years in the past where the great vaulted door was so that he could escape, but to no avail.

And the entire time, Corvinus floated alongside him, spouting archaic phrases and words of encouragement.

"That's it, gundiguts!"

"Would you _shut up_ , please?" Tom begged sometime in the fourth hour of his search.

"You know, it's funny," Corvinus mused, "you made all that effort to free yourself from that diary, and now you're stuck in another prison of sorts."

"Yes. Absolutely hysterical," Tom mumbled from the floor of the main Chamber, where he'd collapsed after another failed attempt at finding the exit.

"Oh, come now," said Corvinus. "Don't be a lobcock."

Tom eyed the book on the ground next to him, wondering if he could somehow find his way back into it.


	7. Responsibility

Response to u/Hellstrike on r/HPfanfiction

Part 1: This one is a bit more serious in tone. Hopefully a suitable answer for a very creative prompt.

_Tom M. Riddle, a wizard from a very sensible world - a nice world, one where Voldemort does not exist - is pulled through the void into an alternate universe, where everything is a chaotic mess._

_The first stop on his grand tour to undo the horror and violence that his alternate self had wrought is a small town called Little Whinging._

_Or, Tom Riddle meets the Dursleys_

* * *

[1990]

The last ten months of Tom Riddle's life were like a poorly-planned science fiction novel written by an emotionally unstable author that had taken to self-medicating with the most dangerous hallucinatory drugs available, and had never heard of plot resolution.

Being sucked into another world by a racist criminal wizard was one thing. He was able to deal with that, as jarring as it was.

But finding out there was a version of him in this new world that was hell-bent on taking it over and had written the _book_ on magical mass murder was another thing entirely. The Tom Riddle in this world had, apparently, gone off the rails years ago, and had taken a lot of innocent people with him.

Sure, Tom had tried some very questionable things in his youth, often straddling the line between light and dark, but he always looked back on that time as the Heir of Slytherin doing acceptably Slytherin things. Nothing ever came of it except a very unhappy Basilisk.

The criminal - who had called himself a "Death Eater," as if _that_ wasn't ridiculous sounding at all - told him that this world's version of Tom was called Voldemort, and that he was currently (to that same world's great relief) presumed dead.

But this presumption was wrong, because Mr Death Eater knew Voldemort was still out there, waiting for the right moment to resurface. Or something. And he was bound and determined to prevent that from happening.

Tom was not necessarily the right person to take up the cause of stopping a Dark Lord. Voldemort was a crazed, over-powered mass murderer. Tom was a professor who drank his tea at room temperature because he didn't like burning his mouth. But there was an element of responsibility to the whole thing, and so Tom put everything he had into learning what he could about... himself.

Then there was the Order, a group of war veterans (because apparently there had been an actual war) who were more than willing to recount their experiences with him, and other Death Eaters that he'd found here and there, who were somewhat _less_ than willing to share. He'd traveled all over to find answers, information, _intelligence_ on Voldemort, and his search had eventually led him to the small town of Little Whinging.

And so there he was, having apparated to the very end of a short, residential street called Privet Drive, looking for the boy called Harry Potter.

He was absolutely sure this was what he wanted to do.

Well, he was almost absolutely sure.

Ninety-nine percent.

The boy could not be more than ten years old, and Tom was hesitant to interrogate him. He knew, from what various sources had told him, that Harry had somehow brought the end of Voldemort, who had tried to kill him when he was just a year old.

Tom cringed at the thought. He'd always been disturbed and disgusted by the actions of his counterpart, but nothing had really hit home just how horrifying the man was like hearing that he'd tried to kill a baby.

He made his way down the quiet, perfectly paved road and buried his unpleasant thoughts about Voldemort deep so that he could deal with the matter at hand.

Number Four was halfway down the street. It was nearly indistinguishable from the other houses, and he half expected the residents to be nearly indistinguishable from each other, too. He thanked the universe that he had been spared from such a mundane and ordinary life.

Harry Potter, apparently, had not.

They had all been sure he was a wizard. Everyone he talked to said that the boy could not have defeated Voldemort without some kind of magical ability. But Tom had his reservations.

He walked up Number Four's drive, the summer flowers lining the pavement fluttering ominously in the breeze. Through the grass, up the steps... Then he stopped.

There were faint noises coming from inside. A television, perhaps. Someone was home.

He knocked on the door, then buttoned his jacket, making it harder to retrieve his wand. For some reason he felt like he might be tempted to use it.

Murmurs, footsteps, then a tall, skinny woman answered the door.

"Yes?" she inquired with mock politeness.

"Petunia Dursley?"

"Yes?"

"My name is Tom Riddle. I am here to talk to you about your nephew."

Petunia closed the door a few inches. "What nephew?"

"Er-" Tom stuttered, "Harry. Harry Potter."

With a single rapid motion Petunia grabbed him by the arm and yanked him inside, then shut the door behind her and closed the curtains tightly over the small window at the top. Without a word, she walked over to a small table, picked up a telephone, and dialed a number, all while not taking her eyes off of Tom for a second.

He could hear the ringing on the other end. But no one answered.

She put the phone down slowly, then gave a vague semblance of a smile. "Just... just calling-"

"The police?" Tom guessed.

"Er, no. Are you one of _them_?" She looked him up and down with keen, perceptive eyes.

"One of what?"

"One of _that_ lot."

He knew what she meant, of course, but he wanted to hear her say it. "Help me out here, Mrs Dursley. What lot?"

She faltered for a second. "Are you a- a- wiz-"

At that moment a massive, blond beast of a child lumbered down the stairs, took one look at the two adults in the hallway, shrugged, then slammed open the door to the kitchen and slammed it closed behind him.

"Please tell me that's not Harry," said Tom.

Petunia gave him a nasty look. "That's my son," she said, her voice full of pride.

"I'm sorry."

He'd meant to say "I'm sorry for misunderstanding," but it came out as "I'm sorry that unpleasant boy-pig is your son."

Petunia huffed and crossed her arms, giving the distinct impression that she was not going to answer any more questions.

So he did.

"To answer your earlier question," he said, "yes, I am a wizard."

Surprisingly, she did not look shocked. She simply picked up the telephone again, dialed a number, and waited, staring at him like he'd asked her to give him her bank account numbers.

This time someone answered.

"Vernon," she said in a hushed voice, "there's a man here who says he wants to talk about Harry."

"Eh? Take Harry? Let him," Vernon's voice sounded through the phone.

"No, Vernon... There's a man _from_ _France_ that wants to talk about Harry..."

The man on the other end made a choking sound. "Oh," he said, sounding much more concerned. "I'm on my way."

"From France," apparently, was code for wizard, judging by the way Petunia had said it. She put the phone down and stood awkwardly, staring at him. Then with sudden gusto she clapped her hands together, her demeanor changing in an instant, an apparent survival mechanism likely picked up in the dangerous wilds of middle-class suburbia.

"I'll make us tea, shall I?" she said. "Have a seat in the parlor."

When in doubt, make tea.

There was a chance that Tom wasn't going to get anything out of her until her husband came home. He decided to try a different approach.

"Actually," he said before she could leave, "I was wondering if you could tell me a bit about Harry's parents. About what happened to them?"

The emotion drained from her face. At first she did not move. Then she gestured silently toward the parlor and led him to one of the revolting, flower-covered sofas. She sat across from him in a high-backed chair, legs perfectly crossed, hands together. A defensive posture.

"What do you want to know?" she asked reluctantly.

Tom sighed. "I want to know what happened to them," he repeated.

"They died."

His patience was wearing thin. "Let's not waste time, Mrs Dursley. Please?"

She was silent for a moment, trying to hold back the words, then-

"They were killed."

"By whom?"

"By a wi- by a wizard."

"What wizard?"

"I- I don't know his name."

Tom looked at her with a fierce intensity which, coming from him, was quite intimidating. "Yes you do. The man that murdered your sister? You know that name."

He wasn't sure why he wanted her to say it. He supposed he needed to hear it out loud, from the mouth of someone directly affected, to make it real for him.

"Voldemort," she said finally, pronouncing it with precision.

Tom pushed on. "How did he do it?"

There were tears forming in her eyes now, and he knew he'd hit a wall.

"I don't know. I wasn't there, was I?"

The large blond child chose that moment to stomp out of the kitchen, thunder down the hall like a small elephant, stomp up the steps, then slam a door somewhere above them.

The moment was lost.

Tom decided it was time to change his approach again. "Can I speak to Harry?" he asked.

"No."

They looked at each other, a silent battle raging between them. Tom knew she would not back down on this one.

There was the sound of a car in the drive, and Petunia jumped up and out into the hallway. Tom felt somewhat reluctant to meet the third member of the painfully Muggle Dursley family. Nevertheless, he stood as Vernon Dursley entered the room, looking exactly how a man named Vernon Dursley ought to look.

"You him then?" Vernon barked, looking Tom up and down much like Petunia had done.

"My name is Tom Riddle. I am here to-"

"You need to leave," he said harshly, Petunia cowering somewhat behind him.

"I am here to talk to your nephew," Tom continued, unaffected by his rudeness.

"Leave, or I'll call the police," Vernon warned, puffing out his chest like a gorilla dressed as an accountant.

If that was the man's attempt at intimidation, it was pitiful. Tom decided to respond in kind.

He crossed the room swiftly, stopping only inches from Vernon's face. The movement alone was enough to send both Muggles backing toward the wall. "I don't respond kindly to threats, Mister Dursley," he muttered.

Petunia patted Vernon on the shoulder and, reluctantly, he sat down in the closest chair.

Tom returned to the sofa.

Petunia did not move right away. Whatever was going on in her head, he could only guess. She took another look at him, then walked back into the hallway, but to his surprise she did not go up the stairs. Instead she went past them to a door underneath, near the kitchen.

A cupboard door.

There was no knocking. Just a single, hard slap of her hand on the wood, and a short "out now, please."

Tom, despite his intellect, was still processing what had just happened when the door opened and out came a small, dark-haired boy wearing broken glasses, over-sized clothes, and a permanent frown.

"In," Petunia muttered to him, pointing to the parlor.

Tom felt an odd and strangely familiar sort of anger bubbling up inside him.

The boy came into the parlor and looked from his uncle to Tom and then to his uncle again. The scar on his forehead, which Tom had been warned about, was evident.

No one said anything.

Harry spoke first. "Who are you?" he said to Tom in a tiny voice.

"Hello, Harry. My name is Tom Riddle. I'm... I worked with your parents."

He had absolutely no doubt that this boy was completely oblivious to the existence of magic. And it filled him with rage. But this had to be done carefully. He wanted to make the boy curious, interested, so that he would be willing to talk.

The tastelessness of the phrase "worked with" was not lost on Tom, however.

"You knew my parents?" Harry asked, a light in his eyes.

"A little. Harry, can I ask you a few questions?" Vernon and Petunia gave him warning looks which he pointedly ignored.

"Okay."

Tom measured his words carefully. "Harry, have you ever been able to do something... unusual? Something odd that you can't explain?"

Harry shot a look at his uncle and aunt, almost as if he was expecting a beating to come at the mere mention of something odd. And the second it happened, Tom made a decision in his mind.

"I- well..." Harry began, but couldn't seem to continue out of fear.

"What did you do?" Tom asked with polite interest.

"I got in trouble," Harry responded.

"And what did you do to _get_ in trouble?"

"Er- well, I was running from Dudley's gang - that's my cousin," he explained, pointing to the ceiling. "And I'd started to climb onto the bins outside and then... I was on the roof."

"The roof?"

"Yes. But I swear, I have no idea how I did it."

"Has anything else like that ever happened?"

Harry made to look at his uncle and aunt again, but stopped. He looked at Tom instead.

"A few things," he said.

Tom smiled kindly. "Thank you, Harry. Do you mind if I talk to your aunt and uncle for a moment?"

"Okay," Harry said, and he left the room.

Tom stood up straight and looked at Petunia as calmly as he could manage. The words were making their way from his brain to his mouth, slowly, reluctantly. The tension in the room was palpable.

"He's coming with me," he said simply.

Petunia narrowed her eyes and started to speak, but Vernon held up a hand to silence her.

"You'll take him? Just like that?"

It was as if he had known where this was going before Tom had said anything, before Tom even knew himself.

"Yes," Tom said, sounding more sure of himself than he was.

"And you'll pay for him, will you? I won't get some ridiculous letter in the mail asking for some kind of child support?"

"Of course not."

"And we'll never see you or your... kind again?"

Tom took a deep breath, his ancient resentment for Muggle ignorance resurfacing. "I desperately hope not."

Petunia disappeared for several minutes and returned with Harry.

Tom knelt beside him. "Harry," he said, "do you want to come stay with me for a while?"

Harry may have been young, but he wasn't stupid. Tom could see the gears turning in his mind. Going off with a stranger was not something you were supposed to do. But his uncle and aunt were right there, in all their haughty middle-class glory, not warning him to do otherwise.

"Okay," he said finally.

Minutes later they were out the door, Harry carrying a small rucksack on his shoulder.

Tom decided he would stay in this miserable world, however long it took, to make sure that this one innocent - this orphan who was like him in so many ways - did not suffer any more from the crimes of his other self.

He just had to figure out how the bloody hell to take care of a child first. There _had_ to be a book on it he could read.

"Where are we going?" Harry asked, more curious than afraid.

"Somewhere better," said Tom.

They walked to the end of the street and disappeared.

* * *

[two and a half years later]

_Dear Tom,_

_How are you? Hope you're doing well. Thanks for your last letter and the books._

_School is going quite awfully, to be honest._

_There's this thing under the castle. This Chamber. And it's got something in it. And, well..._

_Tom, I have some questions._


	8. Arrival

Response to u/Hellstrike on r/HPfanfiction

Part 2: A slight prequel to the adventures of Professor Riddle

_Tom M. Riddle, a wizard from a very sensible world - a nice world, one where Voldemort does not exist - is pulled through the void into an alternate universe, where everything is a chaotic mess._

* * *

The funny thing about magic is that it tends to be messy in unpredictable ways, making the consequences of using complex spells highly random.

Tom liked randomness. It was challenging in an infuriating sort of way, and he lived for infuriating challenges. So he studied the chaos of magic, he wrote about it, experimented with it, gave lectures, was generally considered the expert.

There was so much he didn't know.

One minute he was sipping tea in the university library, deep into a stack of dusty books written in ancient languages, happily scribbling away on a piece of parchment...

And the next he was swirling through the great endless void, unable to see anything, pushed along by some unknown force.

He sighed.

There was a sudden rush of light and sound as the void spit him out, and he hit the ground with a soft thud.

He was in a forest, because all of the odd things in his life tended to happen in forests, and he appeared to be laying in the middle of a circle made of stones.

A man stood outside of the circle, his black cloak billowing in the breeze, his bare arm dripping fresh blood onto the forest floor.

It was a spell.

Whatever had happened to Tom, it was the result of a spell - one this man must have cast.

"Where am I?" he asked with mild interest.

The man seemed terrified at the sound of Tom's voice. He fell to his knees. "My Lord?" he implored. "My Lord, I have brought you here, into the future, to-"

"Future? What are you talking about? What year is it? And why do you keep calling me 'Lord?'"

The man looked at him, and must have seen him clearly for the first time, because the admiration on his face morphed into confusion.

"You're not the Dark Lord?" he demanded.

"Not that I'm aware of."

That was the wrong answer, apparently. The man swore quite loudly and threw the dagger he'd been holding on the ground. Then he looked Tom up and down, appraising him, possibly deciding whether and how to kill him.

"If I may, what exactly were you expecting to happen with this spell?" he asked as a distraction, gesturing to the circle of rocks around him.

The man grunted and started to pace angrily. "I was trying to summon the Dark Lord," he said. "The younger one. But you don't look younger. Who the hell are you?"

Rude. "Who the hell are _you_?"

The man stopped pacing. "I'm Yaxley," he said carefully, as if hearing the name would jog Tom's memory.

"Hello, Yaxley. Where are we?"

He'd shuddered when Tom said his name. "Scotland," he answered.

"And who is this Dark Lord?"

"He's... well, he's you, but not you."

Tom furrowed his brow in confusion. "Me? What do you mean?"

"He's you! You! Tom Riddle! But a different one. I don't know."

Something clicked into place in Tom's mind. "Yaxley," (shudder) "tell me exactly what you were trying to do."

"I was trying to reach back to 1945, to bring the younger Tom Riddle into the present."

"Alright," said Tom, "so a temporal transfer of consciousness spell. But something went wrong, I'm assuming?"

"Obviously, because instead of him, I got you."

Tom frowned. "Yes. How disappointing. Why did you want to bring the younger Tom Riddle into the present?"

Silence. Yaxley was thinking. Deciding something.

"The Dark Lord has fallen," he said after several minutes. "He was defeated."

"He died?"

"No. He was _almost_ killed. But he's out there, somewhere, I know he is, waiting to come back and take up the cause again. But he'll fail. He'll fail..."

Yaxley was getting increasingly frustrated. He took out his wand, threatening the forest at large with his wrath, throwing curses at trees in anger.

Tom had had enough. He took out his own wand, which he was incredibly lucky to have on him at the time of his abduction, and subdued Yaxley with a calming spell.

"Tell me about the Dark Lord," he instructed.

Yaxley's voice was steady and flat. "He's called Voldemort," he said, shuddering again, "and he is the most powerful dark wizard to ever exist, and he will remake the world into one of wizard supremacy, where mudbloods and Muggleborns are put in their rightful place, and true wizard heritage is celebrated-"

"Yes alright, that's enough, Goebbels." There was an almost overwhelming feeling of disgust in the pit of Tom's stomach. "And what's your role in all of this?" he asked. "Who are you to the Dark Lord?"

"I was one of his most loyal... most accomplished... Death Eaters."

Tom snorted. "'Death Eater?' Bit much, isn't it?"

Yaxley shook his head. "It was everything to us. It was a life."

There was a question Tom needed to ask, but couldn't yet bring himself to do it, because he was sure he knew the answer already, and was not currently in a fit state of mind to hear it.

He asked anyway.

"Yaxley," he said, "has the Dark Lord killed people?"

"Many." The look of veneration that Yaxley had had upon Tom's arrival had returned. "Blood traitors and Muggles, and those who are unfaithful..."

Tom knew that it was very unlikely he would be able to replicate the miscalculation in the spell that brought him here, at least not any time soon. Since he was, more or less, stuck in this unfortunate reality, he decided that he might as well make himself useful.

"Where are you going?" Yaxley demanded when Tom turned to leave.

"To clean up a mess. _My_ mess."

There was work to be done in this world. Luckily, Tom lived for infuriating challenges.


	9. Co-Pilot

Response to u/Jon_Riptide on r/HPfanfiction

_In which Diary Tom underestimates the amount of control he has over Ginny, and becomes extremely distracted by the consequences._

* * *

_Harry's so nice, Tom. He's so brave, too._

_I'm sure he is, Ginny._

_Do you think I should talk to him?_

_Sure. He'd be silly not to like you._

_Thanks, Tom!_

It was smooth and subtle, his influence. Insidious. He'd always had a knack for persuasion, and now he knew he could accomplish what he wanted, even without actually being able to talk.

It wasn't long before the connection between them was made...

...

_Tom?_

_Ginny? Is that you?_

_Yes. We need to talk. I need your help._

Poor thing. Did she finally notice the blood on her robes? _What about?_

_Tom, I woke up with feathers and blood all over me!_

If he had a body, he'd have been doubling over in laughter.

_Oh no! What happened? Are you alright?_

Watching the girl falter, question herself, worry... It was entertaining, to say the least. She had no idea what she'd done, and what was still to come.

Tom mused about what else he could make her do. Kill someone? Maybe Dumbledore? How far could he go before she snapped?

_..._

_Tom? I'm scared. I think I'm losing my memory._

_It's alright, Ginny. We'll figure this out._

Time to go. Just a bit more... that's it...

_Thanks, Tom._

_Just tell me what happened. I can help. Do you trust me?_

_Of course._

He could feel his influence taking her over again. One minute he was nowhere, floating in the boundless ether that was the diary, and the next he was inside her mind.

He had control again.

Adjusting once more to the sensations of movement and awareness, he gathered what he needed from Ginny's trunk and headed out of the dorm.

His heart - or at least the one he was using - was racing. Tonight was the night. The Basilisk, his faithful pet, would be set free for the first time in fifty years. And if he was lucky, he might even be able to cross a few mudbloods off the list, and his reign of terror would begin.

He approached the second floor girls' bathroom, thanking the universe that Ginny was female, as it allowed him to come and go as he pleased.

Just before he opened the door, his head turned. No, he turned his head. Harry Potter was standing at the end of the corridor, talking to his stupid little friends.

Tom's stomach did a flip. No, Ginny's stomach. He ignored it and continued into the bathroom.

...

The Basilisk had been released, the Chamber opened once again.

He painted the words on the wall outside the bathroom with glee, imagining Dumbledore's face when it was discovered.

He was so caught up in his excitement that he didn't notice that the "e" he'd been trying to write had turned into a heart.

That wasn't right.

He removed the paint with Ginny's wand and started again, moving the brush in an "e" shape. He ended the stroke with a flourish and stood back to admire it.

It was still a heart.

What the hell?

...

_Tom, I can't remember what I did on Halloween. I thought I'd gone to the feast, but I woke up in my bed. And there was red paint all over me!_

_Oh no! That's horrible!_

_You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you, Tom?_

_I don't know what you mean, Ginny. I'm just a diary!_

...

"Gin, are you alright?" Brother Number who-the-hell-knows asked her.

"I'm fine," Tom said with Ginny's voice, counting the seconds until dinner was over so that he could sneak away.

He sat stiffly at the table, pretending to write in the diary, glancing around every once in a while to make sure he wasn't being noticed. He saw the Boy Who Lived and associated idiots take their seats further down the table, and he made a face.

Well, his _face_ made a face. That is, _her_ face.

And it was smiling.

That was _not_ his intention. Confused, and feeling Ginny's cheeks go red, he looked down at the diary to avoid eye contact with Potter. And then he saw it.

He'd somehow managed to cover an entire two-page spread of his diary with Harry's name. "Harry" was written over and over again in perfectly straight columns, with little hearts and "Ginny Potter" added here and there in the spaces between.

Nauseated, he slammed the book shut and left the hall in a hurry.

Something was very, very wrong.

...

He was halfway to the Gryffindor common room when he heard it.

" _Tom..._ "

He couldn't tell where the voice was coming from. He whirled around, searching the shadows, expecting someone to jump out at him.

" _Tom..._ "

Then he realized the voice he was hearing was in his head. Her head. _Their_ head.

" _Tom, it's Ginny._ "

Well, that was new.

...

_Tom, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to help you_ , _and you're going to help me._

He was back in the diary again, and she was writing to him. What he had done between entering the common room and returning to the book, he had no idea.

_Is that so?_ he responded, uncomfortable with her sudden assertiveness. _What makes you think I'll help you?_

_Because you need me._

_Do I?_

_I'm not an idiot, Tom. My father works with magical artifacts every day. He's taught me a thing or two. It may have taken me a while to figure it out, but I know you were controlling me._

Shit.

_Aren't you a clever one_ , he wrote back, dropping all pretense. _Alright, I'll play your game._ He made the nonexistent equivalent of a sigh _. So, how exactly is this exchange going to work, Ginevra_?

_It's simple. I'll let you have control for as long as you need, but you have to do something for me while you're out here._

_Like what?_

A pause.. _._

_I don't know yet. But when I think of something, you can't say no._

_As long as you don't ask questions about what I do when I do it._

_Fine._

He had no idea what it was that she thought he could do for her that she couldn't do herself, and it was concerning that she was more interested in allowing him to control her than giving herself control.

Surely, anything an eleven-year-old girl could come up with wouldn't be a challenge.

...

_But I can't do it myself_ , Ginny wrote.

_Yes you can._

_Too nervous._

Tom rolled his metaphysical eyes. _Just do it._

_You do it._

_Excuse me?_

_Do it for me. Take over and tell him how I feel!_

_No!_

_Please?_

_Absolutely not._

_I noticed there was another attack, Tom. You wouldn't have anything to do with that, would you?_

_Even if I did,_ he wrote, seething _, you're not allowed to ask me about it. Remember?_

_Well, everyone thinks it's Harry. And I hate seeing him so upset. Maybe I should go to Professor Dumbledore and-_

_Bloody hell. Fine. When did you get so skilled at manipulation?_

_Learned from the best!_

...

He wasn't doing this. There was no way on earth he was going to do this.

He could just lie and _say_ that he did it. Or say that Harry had no interest and, _sorry, Ginny, he just doesn't like you_.

As soon as he had the thought she pulled at him from inside their head, a slight nudge, a warning.

"FINE!" he said out loud, making the other girls in the dorm look at him.

...

He waited for Potter to come out of the Great Hall, Ginny's stomach in knots.

_"Stop it_ ," he thought at her.

Harry walked through the double doors and Tom ran up to him, cursing internally. "Hi, Harry!" he said with a smile, half running to keep up.

"Oh, hi Ginny. How are you?"

"Great! Say, I was wondering..."

He was going to vomit. Or make her vomit, or whatever the logic was at that point.

"...I was wondering if you fancied some... tea later? Maybe in the common room?"

Harry stopped. "Tea?" He blushed. "Oh, er- I'm meant to be going down to Hagrid's tonight with Ron and Hermione."

"Oh," said Tom, disappointed. No - displaying _Ginny's_ disappointment.

"Maybe some other time?"

"Sure! Bye, Harry!" He smiled and ran off, fighting the urge to scream.

" _You can't say I didn't try,_ " he thought at her.

...

Tom finished giving his instructions to the Basilisk and made his way out of the Chamber.

His plans for the beast had been considerably delayed, as he spent roughly half of his corporeal time catering to the whims of a stupid little girl.

Even so, he was dead sure that Harry was an arse, and that Ginny could do better than him. Not that he would ever tell her that.

" _Aw_ ," came a voice in his/their head, " _thanks, Tom. I appreciate that._ "

"SHUT UP!"

The voice of a little girl echoed through the pipes.

...

_You're so much cleverer. Can you write it?_

_good lord_

_Please?_

_Fine. But you have to use whatever I write. Promise?_

_Promise._

_Brilliant._

After he was sure Ginny was gone, Tom thought for a moment, then began to compose:

"His eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad..."

...

_TOM!_

_What?_

_What the hell was that?_

_What was what?_

_That was so embarrassing! Thank God he didn't know it was me._

_You gave me free reign. Artistic license._

_And you need to stop using me to kill the school's roosters. I'm always a mess when I get back._

_Well I can't exactly do it from here, can I?_

_And people keep almost getting hurt! People are being petrified! What if they actually-_

_Look, I can't control what people do. If they see a giant snake in the corridor and they decide to stand around staring at it like idiots... I mean, I don't know what to tell you._

...

He made her promise that this would be the last time. And if Harry said no, then Harry said no. Tom had no interest in the outcome of a school yard crush, even if it did involve his mortal enemy.

"Thanks for meeting me, Harry," he said in his disgustingly girlish voice.

"Er- no problem, Ginny. What did you want to talk about?"

"Well, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to... go out sometime?" Ginny had updated him on the lingo.

Harry blushed and looked slightly horrified. "Oh, well, um... Ginny, It's just... there's a lot going on and I'm not sure if-"

That fucking bastard.

"-maybe some other time? When things die down?"

"Sure. Thanks, Harry."

Tom was livid. Maybe some other time? He was lucky _any_ girl was looking at him, let alone Ginny.

Challenge accepted.

...

_Ginny, there's this spell._

_No._

_No but listen-_

_No. I'm not using a spell on Harry, I'm not going to poison him with love potion, and I have no desire to use the Imperius Curse, so stop suggesting it._

_You are not putting any effort into this_ at all _._

_When we meet him tonight, just act normal._

_At what point are you going to do this yourself? Am I going to have to write wedding vows?_

_Shut up._

...

" _Tell him I like him_ ," Ginny said from inside their shared mind. " _And say that I think he's innocent. And that I know he's not the Heir of Slytherin_. _And please don't curse him._ "

" _You know, the_ actual _Heir of Slytherin has things he would like to finish too, thank you very much_ ," Tom thought back.

"Hey, Harry," said Tom, catching him coming out of a class.

"Hi, Ginny. What's up?"

"I just wanted to say that I think you're innocent, and I believe you. There's no way you could be the Heir of Slytherin." Tom fought back a snort.

"Thanks, Ginny. I really appreciate that. You're great!"

"You're damn right."

"Sorry?"

"I mean... Er-"

" _Ginny, you better appreciate the bloody hell out of this_."

He kissed Harry on the cheek and then ran away.

...

Tom sent the Basilisk loose in the school with a vengeance that night, partially to make up for the time he'd lost in distractions, partially to make up for the horrid and disgusting memory of what he'd done.

If this was how it was going to be, then he'd better get at least one dead mudblood out of it.


	10. Napoleon Complex

Response to u/PuzzleheadedPool1 on r/HPfanfiction

_In which the Dark Lord gains a new face and, with it, a new perspective. Also, Wormtail discovers a penchant for public relations._

* * *

Peter Pettigrew was not a good guy. He knew that. And thanks to the fiasco he'd lived through the year before, everyone else knew it too.

So in his head he justified his support for Voldemort by calling it a survival instinct. Adaptation. Selfish? Yes, of course it was. But Peter never claimed to be otherwise. At least, not recently.

Nevertheless, as he stood there, hand raised high above the revolting potion that would revive the Dark Lord, he had doubts.

He _could_ chop off his hand, sure. Bring the Dark Lord back. Be hailed as his greatest, most loyal servant, with all the accompanying benefits (mainly, not being killed). But also, he would have one less hand.

Was the hand _really_ necessary? The potion, which was more an amalgam of archaic concoctions than anything else, only required a "significant" sacrifice from the servant. It never specified an _entire_ hand.

Maybe he could do a finger.

Just one. He'd done it before. Knew what it felt like. Yes, a finger would do. It was still a sacrifice.

He switched the dagger to his other hand, deciding with some warped kind of logic that one finger from each hand was better than a hand with two missing. Then, with the disgusting potion bubbling beneath him like a pot of clam chowder mixed with evil and rage and garnished with racism, he sliced into himself and felt the familiar, gut wrenching pain.

 _Plop_.

The potion turned a soft, warm red, the color of hot coals. The light would have been soothing had it not been emanating from a brew designed to bring a murderous dark wizard back to life.

The last step was the boy. Peter had nothing against Harry Potter - in fact, there was a chance he owed him a small debt for saving his life some time ago. A _chance_. Regardless, Peter approached Harry, who screamed and fought against his bonds, and made a long cut along his forearm.

The blood was added to the potion, turning it a bright white. The cauldron seized, then began to melt, the potion spilling over the mangled lip and onto the ground. In minutes there was nothing left but a pile of gray goo and a bundle of black _something_ in the middle.

And it was moving.

Peter was ninety-nine percent sure that Voldemort was supposed to return to his old body. Well, ninety-five. Eighty. But the pile of unknown Dark Lord material was far too small to be a fully-grown man.

Cautiously, he waded through the primordial goo and approached the black mass. It writhed like a bag of snakes.

Maybe he'd turned the Dark Lord into a snake. He wasn't sure how he felt about that prospect. On the one hand, no Dark Lord. On the other, a very angry snake that used to be a Dark Lord.

He knelt down and inspected the mass. It appeared to be a bundle of black cloth - robes, perhaps? Slowly, and with his mind screaming at him to leave it the fuck alone and run for the hills, he lifted the cloth.

Laying on the ground was a child, its skin turning from a disgusting shade of white to a more familiar, pinkish pale with every passing second. Its hair was black, its cheeks plump and rosy. It was like seeing one of those baby models on the front of diaper packages, only discolored and slightly terrifying.

Well, that wasn't right.

Peter ran through the ritual again in his head. He looked at the gravestone, which clearly said "Tom Riddle."

He looked at his hand. He was most definitely missing another finger.

Finally, he glanced up at the boy, who was still trapped but had become silent and motionless after the cauldron had melted.

"Don't look at me," said Harry with a shrug.

And then the child spoke, and both Peter and Harry jumped at the sound.

"Wormtail."

Peter hesitated. "My- my Lord?"

"Give me my wand, Wormtail," the Dark Lord said, reaching out with one tiny hand, the forcefulness of his words dampened severely by the fact that he looked and sounded like a three-year-old as he said them.

Peter did not move. "Your wand, my Lord?"

"Yes," the child said, its voice growing louder, "so that I can curse every one of your remaining fingers off individually and make you eat them."

Harry snorted.

"SILENCE!" the Dark Lord commanded in a cute, completely not-threatening voice. He wrapped the black cloth around himself and marched over to Peter, a furious look on his adorable face.

"You have failed beyond bewief, Wormtail."

"Beyond what?" Harry asked, snickering.

"BELIEF!" the Dark Lord yelled, yanking his wand from Peter's hand and pointing it at Harry. "And now, you will die, Harry Potter." He made the familiar movement of the Killing Curse.

Nothing happened.

Voldemort shook his head and pointed his wand again, his face determined. "Avada Kedavra!" he yelled.

Nothing happened even more.

"WORMTAIL!"

Peter wanted to find the greatest dark wizard of all time yelling at him to be intimidating. He really did. But it just... wasn't.

"My Lord, I don't know what happened. I followed your instructions to the letter."

"To the letter? Is that so? I see you still have two whole hands, Wormtail."

Peter put his hands behind his back. "Yes, well, the ritual was not specific-"

"YES IT WAS!"

And now Voldemort's wand was pointed at Peter, who instinctively backed away. "My Lord, I assure you-"

At that moment Harry dropped from the gravestone onto the ground, having finally broken free of his ropes. Before either Peter or Voldemort could react, he was running toward the Portkey that had brought him there, reaching for it, looking back at them with a delighted smile...

And then he was gone.

"Well, this did not go as planned," said the Dark Lord, throwing his wand aside and sitting on the ground.

Peter approached him slowly, encouraged by his sudden lack of weapon. "What shall I do, my Lord?"

Despite his babyish face, Peter could tell that Voldemort's mind was racing. Then he mumbled something incoherent.

"I'm sorry, my Lord?"

"I said... I'm hungry."

"Yes, of course, my Lord."

There was absolutely no reason for Peter to stay with the Dark Lord. He was no longer a threat; if anything, he was a potential burden. But for some reason Peter simply could not bring himself to leave the child on his own.

So they returned to the Riddle house, Voldemort stumbling through the grass on short, stubby legs and Peter following close behind.

"We need to think of a plan," Voldemort said once they reached the familiar sitting room on the third floor and Peter had found something for them to eat.

"My Lord, I thought we were going to summon the Death Eaters to-"

"No. I am in no mood to lecture a bunch of disloyal rich boys who aren't going to listen to me unless I threaten to curse them. Besides, I highly doubt they'll be very weceptive when they see me."

Voldemort's face screwed up in adorable frustration. Peter stayed silent.

"Receptive," he corrected himself. "The point is, I need new servants."

"Like whom?"

"Don't know yet. Perhaps some brilliant minds - none that would rival my own, of course, not that any such person exists. Hand me my juice."

"Yes, my Lord."

They sat in silence for a while, Voldemort deep in thought. Perhaps he was just being hopeful, but Peter thought he noticed a distinct change in the Dark Lord's demeanor. He seemed more clear-headed. Calmer. He'd even taken his inability to do magic in stride, which was highly uncharacteristic.

"This whole war thing..." Voldemort said suddenly.

"Yes?"

"It's a ridiculous idea. Scrap it. We need to try something else."

"Something else? Like what?"

Voldemort thought for a moment, then said, "politics."

"My Lord, you were most proficient in politics before-"

"No, I was proficient in the art of getting someone else to do the political wrangling _for_ me. This time, I want to do everything myself, out in the open."

"Are you sure, my Lord?"

"Yes. Hearts and minds, Wormtail. Hearts and minds."

"Of course, my Lord, though, admittedly... your public image has suffered somewhat since the 1970s."

"Noted. But-" he pointed a tiny finger toward his face. "New face, new image. Imagine the possibilities."

"I am, my Lord," Peter muttered grimly.

* * *

Voldemort was not hesitant to abandon any and all allies, plans, and goals that were not conducive to his new public strategy.

That meant nearly everything had to go. Everything except the name.

"I just think," Peter said as they walked through Knockturn Alley side by side, Voldemort's sudden anonymity giving them newfound opportunities, "that a new face is the perfect opportunity to choose a new name. Besides, you won't be able to win hearts and minds using a name people are still too terrified to say."

"Point taken. But I-"

He was interrupted by an old, bedraggled-looking witch who had stopped when she saw him.

They both tensed up, worried that one of them had been recognized. But the woman's face broke into a smile.

"He's so cute!" she said to Peter, reaching for the Dark Lord's cheeks.

"Er-"

"Touch me, and I will curse you into oblivion," Voldemort threatened, his voice more babyish than ever.

"Aw," the woman sang, "so feisty! How old is he?"

"ETERNAL!" Voldemort screamed.

"Three," said Peter.

"Aw," she repeated, ruffling Voldemort's hair before walking away.

"I hate this," he muttered. "I desperately need this aging potion, or some kind of time spell."

"Do time spells exist?"

"No, but I can make one. At least, I could if I was able to DO ANYTHING PROPERLY!" He sounded like a child whose toy had been taken away, which was exactly what had happened, in a way.

They were accosted by no less than four additional witches and wizards as they bought their supplies, all of whom were very taken with the tiny, adorable child that kept threatening to brutally murder them.

They had to stop and find dinner at one point because the greatest dark wizard of all time seemed to be _constantly hungry_ , a fact that Peter was careful not to mention, and were not bothered again until they reached their last shopping destination.

An elderly wizard that looked like he'd already been dead a few years had offered Voldemort a lolly in front of Shyverwretch's and, surprisingly, he took it without a fuss. It was still in his mouth when they entered the shop.

"My Lord," Peter murmured, " why did you-"

"It's yummy."

"Yummy?"

"Shut your mouth."

"Yes, my Lord."

They had a list of items they needed, and split up to find them. A simple task. But it wasn't long before Peter heard his nickname being whispered from two aisles over.

"Wormtail! Come here. I need you."

Peter found the Dark Lord standing on a chair, trying and failing to reach a jar of baby dragon hearts that was bigger than his head.

"Are you sure these are the ones you need, my Lo-"

He stopped talking at the sight of a young witch in black robes, who was watching Peter and Voldemort from the end of the aisle with a look of confusion on her face.

"What does a baby need dragon hearts for?" she asked rather rudely.

"None of your business, you wench," Voldemort muttered.

"Er- it's medicinal," said Peter.

When she walked away Voldemort's face contorted with fury.

"I swear to _Merlin_ the next person that comments on my age or height or face is going to get the Killing Curse."

"You can't do that kind of magic yet, my Lord."

"I know that, you idiot. Help me down."

"Hey!" came a voice from behind. It was the shop owner. He hobbled towards them, anger on his ancient face. "No children allowed in the shop!"

Voldemort got out his wand, but Peter stepped in front of him.

"Sorry, sir, I can't leave him alone. He's only three."

"Well, still," the man insisted, looking past Peter at the small despot behind him, "I can't allow... you... to..."

His face went blank.

Peter turned around to find Voldemort holding his wand up, an almost invisible stream of something coming out of the tip and traveling right into the old man's head.

"Imperius Curse," he muttered to Peter, an unintentionally cute smile spreading across his face.

"Seems you have _some_ magic back, at least."

"Seems so."

They were both in a considerably better mood after that.

* * *

Voldemort's magic was returning slowly, and as he practiced he told Peter about how powerful he'd always been, even as a child. Some of his stories were downright terrifying, especially given that he told them with a sense of pride and accomplishment. There were few things more disturbing than a three-year-old child calmly explaining how he'd managed to hang a rabbit from the ceiling and break its neck without touching it.

At some point his Legilimency skill also returned, which it had done on its own, being a talent he'd been born with and not one he'd learned. It infuriated Peter to no end.

"No," Voldemort had said one day, out of the blue, as they were preparing ingredients for an over-powered aging potion.

"I'm sorry, my Lord?"

"No, I did not forget the nettles."

Peter sighed. "I didn't say you did, my Lord."

Minutes later... "Yes."

"What?"

"Yes, you can stop calling me 'Lord.'"

"Great."

"Tom."

"What?"

"You can call me Tom. You asked-"

"No, I didn't ask. But that's fine. Tom," he added hastily. It felt awkward. "What made you decide-"

"Public image. You were right."

"Oh. Well I-"

"Yes."

"It's just-"

"Agreed."

"Can you-"

"Possibly."

"WILL YOU STOP READING MY BLOODY MIND?" Peter yelled.

Voldemort did not respond. He just looked at Peter with narrowed eyes, his rosy cheeks turning a much more sinister shade of red.

They spent the next half hour mixing ingredients and adding them to the cauldron, Voldemort staring at Peter the whole time with carefully contained rage, undoubtedly probing every corner of his mind just to spite him.

Eventually the aging potion was finished, and Voldemort took it without hesitation.

"My Lord-"

"Tom."

"Tom, we should really have tested that first."

"Shut up. I'm trying to focus."

Peter gave a confused look. "On aging?"

Voldemort closed his eyes. "It's working," he said. He began to glow a dull grey color, like a dim fluorescent office light not long for this world.

Nothing else happened.

They waited in silence - one, five, ten minutes - but it was useless. The potion had not worked.

Peter was sure Voldemort - _Tom_ \- was going to explode in anger. But he didn't. He just sighed, shook his head, and muttered, "the long way, then."

* * *

Months went by. And every day, Tom seemed to become more logical, more cunning, and more dangerous. Sort of.

The sitting room of the Riddle house slowly became covered in parchment. There were notes everywhere, arrows pointing to pictures, names underlined or crossed out. It was like the lair of a serial killer.

Except Peter had to do all the writing, because said killer's sloppy scrawl was unreadable.

Eventually they had a solid plan, one that was guaranteed to launch Tom's political career and put him on the map sooner rather than later. But before they could begin to carry it out, Tom had to fully commit to being a toddler. At least for a little while.

"Babies like toys," Peter schooled him on the eve of Phase I.

"I know that, Wormtail."

"Yes, but they like to _play_ with them. Not set them on fire or rip them apart. You won't win any points for that."

Tom hesitated, then gave a quick, reluctant nod.

"And talking like an adult is only going to cause suspicion."

"Obviously."

"Do you even know how to talk like a child?" Peter asked.

Tom gave him an annoyed look. "I still can't say the letter 'r' properly half the time. I think I'll be fine."

"Not if you keep talking in complex sentences and using impressive vocabulary. Single word responses. And if it feels too dumb to say, say it."

"Fine."

"Now, I've forged the adoption papers, so the witch and wizard you'll be staying with will have no idea you're the wrong kid."

"Great."

"And - not surprised I have to reiterate this - no killing."

"But I thought we agreed I was going to kill them!" he pouted in a toddler's whiny voice.

"Not until we have what we need. Time to go!" Peter said, and patted Tom on the head.

They both froze.

"Er- sorry, my Lord. I don't know why I-"

"It's fine."

They left the house without another word. Phase I had begun.


	11. Friday

Response to u/First-NameLast-Name on r/HPfanfiction

_In which Tom Riddle is forced to endure the most torturous detention imaginable._

* * *

The worst day of Tom Riddle's life occurred on a Friday.

Some ridiculous, simpering Ravenclaw girl had seen fit to throw him a crumpled up note in the middle of Transfiguration - the _only_ class in which the Professor watched his every move - and then giggle along with the rest of the idiots whenever Dumbledore made him read it out loud.

"Is there something you'd like to share with the rest of the class, Mister Riddle?"

"No-there-is-not, Professor," he said through gritted teeth.

"The note in your hand seems to suggest otherwise." Dumbledore gave his best mocking grin, the one reserved only for Tom, which conveyed both stern disciplinarian and intellectually superior arsehole in one convenient expression. "Please, enlighten us."

He sat on the edge of his desk and folded his arms, waiting.

Tom stood slowly, trying not to seem mortified, because that would suggest weakness and he did not want to seem weak in front of Dumbledore. He held out the note and began to read.

"'Riddle,'" it said, "'you can...'"

"Yes?" Dumbledore prodded.

Tom's cheeks betrayed him. Full mortification had taken hold once he'd seen the contents of the note.

"'You can... Slyther...' Look, sir, can I just take the detention now? This is really not necessary."

Dumbledore merely smiled. Tom vowed then and there to murder him someday.

He took a deep breath. "'Riddle, you can Slytherin to my dorm any time.'"

As the class erupted into laughter, he made a mental note to murder the Ravenclaw girl as well.

" _Now_ you can have that detention, Riddle. See me after class."

When the bell rang the students filed out of the room, almost every one of them glancing back at Tom with a tasteless grin, and he stayed put, fuming and plotting revenge.

Dumbledore took his time erasing the board. Then put his books away. Then filed some paper. Rearranged his desk. Refilled his ink. Finally, after making Tom sit there for an unreasonable amount of time just to ensure that he would be late for his next class, he spoke.

"So," he said, folding his arms again, "detention. I think tonight at eight o'clock would be suitable."

"Yes, sir."

"Excellent. Meet me in the Headmaster's office."

"Sir? I have to go to the Headmaster's office to do lines?" He did not want Dippet to hear about this single blemish on his perfect record.

"Oh, you won't be doing lines tonight, Mister Riddle." Dumbledore smiled again, and Tom gripped his desk so hard his knuckles turned white. "Off you go."

He left without another word.

* * *

When it was almost eight o'clock Tom headed toward the Headmaster's office, dreading what fresh hell Dumbledore had planned that could top the one he'd endured that morning.

When he reached the top of the steps he noticed that the door was already open. Several house elves were flitting in and out, carrying trays of food. Confused, he slid in after them and scanned the room.

A small round table had been placed in the middle of the office. It was set for two. Dippet was nowhere to be seen, but Dumbledore was there, already seated in front of his meal. He gave an infuriatingly polite wave when he noticed Tom standing there.

"Ah, Mister Riddle. On time, as always. Join me, won't you?"

"What is this, Professor?" he inquired, imagining some sort of torture scenario involving food or poison.

"We are going to have dinner together, Tom. You and me. I think we have some things to discuss, and what better way to do so than over a friendly meal?"

Torture would have been preferable.

"Sir, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather-"

"Sit down, Tom."

He sat. House elves descended on him with a plate full of food and a cup of something or other, and the whole time they fussed over him Tom kept his eyes on Dumbledore.

And Dumbledore kept his eyes on Tom.

"So," Dumbledore said after a characteristically _Dumbledore_ silence, "this is what we are going to do. I will bring up a topic, and you will provide a response. I will respond to your response, and we will go from there. Understood?"

"Yes, sir, I understand the basic mechanics of civilized conversation."

"You could have fooled me, considering how often you see fit to interrupt me in class."

Tom narrowed his eyes. This wasn't going to be a conversation. It was going to be Dumbledore's own unique brand of punishment.

Dumbledore, apparently, could sense his suspicion. "There is no need to be worried, Tom. I'm not here to torture you."

 _I am here to torture you_ , Tom interpreted in his head.

"Forgive me, Professor. I am somewhat confused as to the purpose of this particular type of punishment."

Dumbledore eyed him carefully. "A conversation is not a punishment, Tom, unless you make it so."

He didn't know how to respond to that. What kind of mind game _was_ this?

"Anyway," Dumbledore continued, cutting into his dinner and gesturing for Tom to do the same, "let's start with this: how was your day?"

"Fine, sir."

"Just fine?"

"Fine, with the exception of a small bout of mortifying embarrassment in the morning. You?"

The blatant sarcasm was ignored. "My day was exceptionally productive, thank you for asking."

"I bet it was," Tom muttered under his breath, gripping his butter knife tightly in his hand and wondering how much force it would take to turn it into a proper weapon.

Dumbledore poured himself some tea. "And how are you finding your studies so far this year?"

"Fine, sir."

"And how about your social activities?"

Was he being interrogated? "What about them?" he asked.

"Well, I've always found that, for students - and perhaps for adults as well - a healthy social life makes for an exceptionally well-rounded individual."

Tom took a sip of whatever was in his cup so that he didn't have to respond. Either Dumbledore was outright asking him what he got up to in his private time, or suggesting that he already knew. It put him on edge.

"Do you have a girlfriend?" Dumbledore asked suddenly.

Tom choked on his drink. "I'm sorry?"

"Boyfriend, perhaps?" he inquired.

Tom forced his cheeks not to turn red through sheer willpower. "Sir, I don't- I don't see how that's relevant-"

"Forgive me, Tom. I like to check up on my students' mental health from time to time. As such, I believe it is perfectly natural for people your age to enjoy all kinds of relationships, for without such experiences at this most important time in your life, you are missing out on a fundamental aspect of young adulthood."

He wanted to melt into his chair. "I didn't say I was... without... Is there anything else we can talk about, Professor?" He had an overwhelming, desperate, _agonizing_ need to change the bloody subject.

The look Dumbledore gave was indiscernible. Satisfaction at Tom's discomfort, maybe? "There's no need to be embarrassed, Tom," he said. "When I was your age, I enjoyed quite a few intimate liaisons with-"

"How about Transfiguration? Can we talk about that?"

"Are you sure? You seem to particularly despise Transfiguration this year. Even more so than last year, which I did not think was possible."

"Fine, then how about _absolutely anything else_?"

Dumbledore looked like he was considering something. "If you don't mind," he said after a while, the corners of his mouth twitching, "I would like to discuss our most recent argument, as I believe it may stand as an appropriate representation of the struggle you and I have to find common ground."

"Sir?" Tom had argued with the man so many times he couldn't recall what their most recent spat had been about.

"Despite our lesson last week being about the properties of transfigured objects over time, you and I had discussed - to the detriment of the rest of the poor class - theories on the nature of magic."

_Oh god._

"And I had mentioned," he continued, "what I believe to be one of the most fundamental variables to consider when attempting to understand such theoretical approaches, with which you, naturally, disagreed."

_Please, not this._

"Are you-" Tom stuttered, "sir, are you suggesting we discuss... love?"

"Yes," he said simply.

It was bad enough being forced to have a "pleasant" conversation with the man. Now he wanted to wax poetic about love? Tom could feel his jaw set in annoyance.

Dumbledore sat back, chewing his food, a misty look in his eyes. "Love is a many-layered thing, Tom."

"Is that a scientific description, sir?"

"Science, unfortunately, only plays a small part in the process of understanding love. We are, all of us, absurdly ignorant to its true nature."

"Well," Tom muttered, "we know it's many-layered, apparently."

This brought Dumbledore out of his reverie. He narrowed his eyes almost threateningly, and a small smirk appeared on his pretentious face. Disciplinarian and arsehole. "Tell me what you think love is, Tom."

"I'd rather not, sir."

"I know you'd rather not. But you're going to." He sat back again, waiting for an answer, sipping his bloody pumpkin juice like a man who'd just won a game of chess by shooting his opponent in the head.

Tom shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He had no idea what to say. He'd never bothered to waste time thinking about it before, as the entire concept - in addition to being abhorrent - held no purpose in his research.

"Love is..." he began.

"Yes?"

"...in scientific terms..."

"Yes?"

"...bollocks."

Dumbledore did not get angry. Instead, he looked amused. "I am glad you take our conversation so seriously, Mister Riddle. Perhaps you are so engaged that you feel we should continue at a later date? Maybe some light philosophical discussion with tea tomorrow?"

_Fucking hell._

"No, sir. Sorry, sir," Tom said flatly.

"Very well. But I stand by my assessment. You will remain at least partially ignorant to the true nature of magic if you do not understand this one essential concept." He pointed a pie-covered fork at Tom. "It may be that, for the individual, understanding love begins with getting in touch with one's feelings. Are you in touch with your feelings, Tom?"

 _Yes_ , he thought, _I am intimately in touch with my blind, murderous rage_. That was a feeling, wasn't it?

"I don't know, Professor." He decided to press the issue. "But regardless of what I _feel_ , nothing I've read has provided sufficient proof that love is a stronger force than magic itself, nor that it plays any significant role in enhancing the power of magic."

Dumbledore held up a hand. "You are wrong on several counts, Tom, the first of which is the assumption that I have categorized love as a completely separate entity from magic. To explain the second, I would like to tell you a story-"

"But-"

"-and you will not interrupt me while I tell it."

"Yes, Professor." He resigned himself to having no control over the conversation. As long as it didn't deviate into awkward territory again, maybe he could get through it.

Dumbledore looked out the window, his eyes going misty once more. "When I was not much older than yourself, I met someone."

Tom wanted to die.

"He was brilliant, like me. Lonely, like me. And full of ambition, a trait we also unfortunately shared."

Where was this going?

"We had what we thought was an unbreakable bond. And our magic was more powerful because of it."

"But that makes no-"

"And when we had reached the end of that bond, succumbing, as it were, to an irreconcilable disagreement, the state of our magic suffered. We never spoke again, but I know neither of us would experience the level of power we'd had before." He stopped there.

After a moment of unbelievably awkward silence he added, "I have not yet been able to adequately replicate some of the magic we did together, even to this day."

Tom tried desperately to get the mental image of a young Albus Dumbledore in love out of his mind.

"That's not love. That's infatuation," he said.

"Maybe," Dumbledore conceded, "yet there is no denying that a stronger magic existed when we were together."

"And the only thing that story seems to prove," Tom added, "is that love makes people, if anything, weaker."

"But there is something to be said for the experience. As they say, it is better to have loved and lost..." he trailed off, half paying attention, half gazing out the window - lost, undoubtedly, in nostalgia.

They sat in silence for a while. Dumbledore sighed wistfully.

"Can we _please_ talk about Transfiguration now?" Tom asked, unable to hide the pleading in his voice.


	12. Lessons in Transformative Magic

Response to u/GwainesKnightlyBalls on r/HPfanfiction

_A spider with a grudge ruins Tom's life. So he tries to fix it, and ruins it even more._

* * *

"Well done, Tom," said Dippet as they followed the Ministry officials out of the Headmaster's office. "I won't be surprised if you win an award for this."

"Thank you, sir," said Tom. Even _he_ could not have predicted how well his plan had worked.

Rubeus Hagrid - a fool, but a useful one, as it turned out - was led by two aurors out of the school and off the grounds, and Tom watched him leaving with a grin on his face that he didn't care to hide. There was no place in his future world for half-breeds, anyway.

He returned to his dormitory in a particularly positive mood, despite his plans with the Basilisk having to be put on hold. Mudbloods could wait.

When he opened the dormitory door, a strong wind hit him. The window was open, but no one else was there. He crossed the room to close it and was immediately pushed to the ground by something small and hairy and very, very angry.

Hagrid's spider was on top of him, holding him down with unusual force for a creature so small, its two dripping fangs targeting his face like something out of a nightmare. He reached for the wand in his pocket, but as soon as he made the movement, the spider latched onto his forearm.

One second was all it took. A burning, sickening pain shot up his arm and into his head. The spider let go and scurried out of the window, and Tom could have sworn, even through the blinding agony, that he heard the damn thing mutter "bastard!" on its way out.

By the time he was able to sit up properly the pain had spread throughout his entire body. He scrambled for his wand, which felt awkward in his left hand, and tried to call out a spell that would stop the venom's spread. But he knew it was already too late.

The veins in his arm had turned a sickening green color, and the two spots where the fangs had penetrated his skin were raw, red, and filled with pus.

He had no choice. He needed help.

He stood on shaky legs and stumbled out of the dormitory and down the steps. The two or three Slytherins in the common room stared at him as he lumbered past them toward the entrance, covered in sweat. But of course, being Slytherins, they did not offer to help.

Somehow Tom managed to make it the whole way to the hospital wing without being seen and without fainting, though he had to stop a few times to vomit. When he entered, the nurse - whose name he'd never cared to remember - immediately sat him on a bed and started fussing about, ripping the clothing off his arm and treating the bite with something that smelled like oranges and bad breath.

"What happened?" she demanded, performing some kind of spell over the gaping holes in his skin.

He didn't answer. In his distress he couldn't remember the proper name for the stupid thing that attacked him, and he wasn't sure how much he wanted to reveal. He also couldn't remember what he was even trying to hide in the first place.

"Tell me what happened," the nurse said again.

"Spider" was all he managed to get out.

She didn't bother to press the issue, most likely because she was so used to students being reluctant to reveal their idiocy to her that she no longer cared.

"The venom has curse properties, I'm afraid. The arm cannot be saved." She said it in such a matter-of-fact way that he didn't fully process it at first. She stood back a bit, her wand pointed directly at him. "Don't move," she warned, "or you'll lose more than just an arm."

Tom scrambled off the bed and onto the floor, barely able to stand. "What the bloody hell are you doing?" he yelled, backing away as best he could.

"Sit back down, child. This won't hurt if it's done right."

"Won't hurt? You're threatening me with amputation and I'm supposed to believe it _won't hurt_?"

"You must stay still!" she warned, her patience obviously wearing thin.

"No, there's- there's got to be a way to save it. I can't walk around with no arm for the rest of my life-"

"People have had to live with worse, Mister Riddle."

Before he knew it her wand was no longer pointed at his arm, but at his head. And then everything went black.

* * *

When Tom woke up he was lying in a bed, and the world felt strangely off-center. Slowly, the memories of what had happened crept back into his mind and in a panic he reached for his arm, desperately hoping it was there.

It wasn't.

He wanted to scream, to throw something, maybe curse the entire hospital wing until it was a pile of ashes, but he had no ability to move.

"Ah, you're awake," said the nurse, bustling over to check on him.

"Why can't I move?" he muttered in a weak voice, the very act of breathing the words feeling like too much work.

"I've given you a... well, let's call it a sedative. It'll wear off in a few hours. You are perfectly healed, of course-"

"I'm missing an arm. How the hell is that 'perfectly healed?'"

"I am referring to the remaining tissue, obviously. You will report back here every evening for the next two weeks for observation and exercise until you become accustomed to the change. We can, of course, requisition a prosthetic-"

"Please, can I just go?"

He did not wait for her to respond. It took every ounce of willpower he had to sit himself up, stand on the floor, and walk toward the exit. She did not fight him, but handed him more sedative before he left. She also gave him back his wand, which, in his left hand, felt horribly wrong.

This simply would not do.

* * *

Tom had spent almost every waking hour since he left the hospital wing researching, desperately looking for any way that he could restore what he'd lost. His homework lay forgotten, many of his classes were missed, and he wasn't bothering to eat most of the time.

The spider was an Acromantula, whose venom was largely thought to be of the common, mildly toxic, flesh-eating variety. Apparently the only way that the venom could carry any sort of curse was if the spider willed it so.

The fucking thing had cursed him on purpose.

But despite his efforts, his research yielded little information of use. There were no known potions that could reconstruct a missing limb that had been cursed off. Though, if he wanted to make himself _think_ he had an arm (or three, or ten) there was something for that...

Not a single charm could do it, unless he was alright with having a semi-transparent ghost arm hover near his shoulder all day, for which no practical purpose could possibly exist...

It would do no good transfiguring something into a working arm, since there was no way to tie the nerves and muscles together so that he could control it...

After weeks of searching, he had concluded that the only way to change his circumstances was to go back in time, which happened to be, at that moment, impossible.

Time spells were funny things in that they didn't, technically, exist. It was a branch of magic that had always been around, but was highly neglected because most of the wizarding world knew that there were some things you simply _did not meddle with_.

Only high-level government authorities had access to anything that could manipulate time, and they kept any such items well-guarded. But Tom was confident in his abilities, and he felt that he knew enough of the theory to construct some kind of rudimentary time manipulation spell.

And he wasn't wrong. It took longer than he'd hoped, given that he had to steal ingredients, carry books, and test things one-handed, but eventually he'd managed to construct some sort of complicated, makeshift time travel ritual. There were only two missing components: the number of days of travel (which he wouldn't know until the moment he attempted it), and a unique ingredient that he simply could not get around using, which was the hair from a transformed animagus that was at least thirty-five years old but no older than fifty, and that was also a cat.

It was lucky, then, that one of the Transfiguration professors fit that description exactly.

* * *

Tom followed Professor McGonagall everywhere, obnoxiously, for days, and not once did she turn into a fucking cat. Granted, there probably wasn't much call for it in the middle of a school, unless it was for a lesson.

He even tried several times to sneak into her quarters to search for stray hairs, but when he finally infiltrated the place he learned with great disappointment that she was an incredibly clean and organized person.

Unfortunately, he had never said more than a few words to her, since he'd always had Dumbledore for Transfiguration, to his great dismay. He thought maybe he could approach her and say he was working on a project related to animagi, but it wouldn't make much sense that he was studying it, because he'd already taken the third year class in which that subject was taught.

Then a brilliant idea hit him, as they often did, during a fit of frustration, and suddenly he had a plan.

She was in her office, feeding the myriad animals she kept in cages for Transfiguration practice.

"Professor?" he said, putting on his best smile.

"Yes?" She climbed down from a ladder that led to a cage of parrots and turned to look at him. "Riddle, isn't it?"

"Yes, Professor. I was wondering if I might have a word?"

She looked confused. "Professor Dumbledore is your teacher for this subject, is he not?"

"Yes, ma'am, but I was wondering... well..." _Play it nice and coy_ , he told himself. _A bit nervous, a bit shy, but eager_.

"Yes?"

"I was wondering if you could tell me how to become an animagus."

"I'm sorry?"

"I want to learn to be an animagus."

She looked him up and down with narrowed eyes. "May I ask why?"

 _Eager. Excited_. "I have always wanted to do it, and I know all the theory behind it - I've been studying it in my free time for a while now - and I believe it is a beneficial skill to have on one's CV when applying for Ministry positions." He said all of this very fast.

"Well," she said, "it's a bit of an involved process, and there are quite a lot of forms to complete. But first and foremost, you're underage."

"I understand, Professor, but might the Ministry make an allowance for me if I was under your guidance?"

She sighed. "It's not unheard of. I'll see what I can do. Are you absolutely sure this is something you want to pursue? It takes a lot of work."

"I think so. Can you show me? Does it hurt?"

"No," she said, "it does not hurt. But there's no point in showing you until you have begun the process. _If_ you begin the process. Mind you, I'm not promising anything. The Ministry is ridiculously strict about animagi."

"Thank you, Professor."

_So close._

* * *

"Headmaster Dippet has granted you - and convinced the Ministry to grant you - special dispensation owing to your... impressive record and 'academic prowess,' as he called it. You will also be allowed to stay at the castle through the summer until the process is complete."

Tom was in McGonagall's office, having been called from his History of Magic lesson, and she was levitating a mountain of books beside him.

"Read these," she huffed, adding another three books to the pile, "if you haven't already. Report back to me when you feel you've gotten the gist of what will happen, and then we can begin preparations."

"Yes, Professor," he said, using his wand to float the stack of books out the door.

He honestly hadn't paid much attention in Dumbledore's class when they'd gone over animagi, and had no idea it was so involved.

Because Tom hated animals. Well, most animals. He had an affinity for snakes, of course, and he appreciated the magical properties of some creatures. But wanting to _become_ an animal was like wanting to drill a hole in your head - it was useless, disgusting, and dampened your intelligence. What was the point?

Luckily, he did not expect to have to complete whatever insanely complex process this nightmare required, as all he needed was for McGonagall to transform _just once_ in his presence.

If he had to get through a single "homework" assignment to reach that point, then he would.

* * *

It took three sessions with McGonagall before she finally transformed and he was able to slyly pick a few hairs up off the floor before leaving her office.

Unfortunately he'd had to keep a mandrake leaf in his mouth for the duration of those sessions, and thought it wise to continue to do so until he was sure the ritual had worked and he didn't have to keep up his feigned interest in being an animagus.

The ritual did not work.

Everything had been perfect. He'd had every ingredient he needed, every rune was drawn correctly, every incantation was said with precision. When the final step was completed the world had seemed to briefly shudder around him, but nothing else had happened.

And all the cat hair was gone.

And so, after a considerable amount of shouting, destroying things, and raging against the world, Tom returned to McGonagall to continue the ridiculous process of becoming an animal, which he felt no one should ever want to do in the first place because animals were stupid and useless.

It was not how he wanted to spend his summer at all. But, if he managed to do the time travel ritual correctly, none of it will have happened anyway. At least, he hoped.

Luckily McGonagall was so paranoid about getting the animagus thing right that she more or less did everything for him, and he only vaguely listened to her as she droned on about transformations and rules and markings and such.

"Spit it into here," she said, handing him a beaker full of a brown liquid that smelled like sewage and had a dead moth floating around in it. They were standing out on the grounds underneath a full moon, because the procedure didn't already have enough allusions to werewolves, apparently, and he was finally allowed to remove the disgusting mandrake leaf from the roof of his mouth.

"Now, the last step will occur during the next thunderstorm, so be ready."

"Yes, Professor."

Now that he was in the final phase, Tom felt he could press McGonagall to show him the transformation a few more times to "prepare" himself.

She conceded, and before they left the grounds, he had a new vial of cat hair.

* * *

The runes were redrawn, the candles lit. He said the incantation, and once again, the world shuddered around him. But this time, he knew he'd done it right, because a crack appeared - a thin tear in the fabric of reality. It buzzed and crackled with electricity and energy and the wanton breaking of the laws of physics.

And he jumped through it.

It was like being sucked into a thin, electrically charged tube. When he came out the other "side," or whatever it was, he hit the hard stone floor of his dormitory with a thud.

He felt distinctly lighter, and the world looked distinctly larger. But it didn't matter. He'd done it. The room was exactly how he'd left it that same night, the window already open, and the spider most likely hiding in the shadows. The only thing left to do was stop himself from entering the dormitory.

He stood up straight and immediately realized that something was very, very wrong.

He had two arms again, which was nice. But they weren't arms, exactly. And when he stood up he gained no height. And he couldn't feel his clothes anymore. Had the time/space hole stripped him naked?

But he wasn't naked, either. He was covered in thick black feathers. And then the realization hit.

He was a bird.

A fucking bird.

Somehow, his trip through time had triggered whatever animagus transformation McGonagall had been preparing him for, and he'd arrived in the past with one more arm and one less of everything else that made him human.

He yelled in frustration. A tiny, pathetic "caw!" echoed back to him.

Now, it was one thing to suddenly become an animal when you weren't expecting it. Jarring. Upsetting. A little nauseating.

But what infuriated him more than anything else was the fact that his animagus form was a _crow_.

Not a snake, or a Basilisk, or something equally terrifying and symbolic. No, the Heir of Slytherin had transformed into a small, useless black bird that sounded like it was screaming at the world when it spoke.

And to make matters worse, he had no idea how to change back. Why didn't he listen to McGonagall? What was it she had said about the transformations? He couldn't remember, because he'd stopped paying attention three sessions back, since he'd had no real intention of _becoming an animal_.

The door opened suddenly and in walked the younger Tom, a proper human, about to be attacked by an Acromantula with a grudge.

Tom did the only thing he could think of, and started screaming at his younger self and waving his arms - _wings_ \- wildly. The human Tom backed away in shock, clearly not expecting a small, annoying bird to accost him so violently in the middle of his dorm.

But it had done the trick. The Acromantula took its chance and leaped from the shadows, and human Tom had just enough time to retrieve his wand and blast it away.

He threw the dead spider out the window and turned around to look at the bird that had saved him.

...and pointed his wand at it.

Because Tom Riddle hated animals.

 _Well shit_ , Tom thought to himself, realizing entirely too late that there were probably worse things that could happen than losing an arm.


	13. Paying the Price

Response to u/Termsndconditions on r/HPfanfiction

_Charm is a weapon. Use it with care._

* * *

_And in this issue we look back on recent Hogwarts graduates to see what they're doing, where they're going, and, most importantly, who they're with! The last five years have seen a number of notable bachelors come out of those most sacred halls._

_..._

_Mr. Riddle, perhaps the most accomplished student Hogwarts has seen since Dumbledore himself, seems to prefer staying out of the limelight, and has obtained a respectable job as an antiques dealer. But we have it on good authority that he remains single._

Tom threw the copy of _Witch Weekly_ into the fire, watching his own face staring back at him from the flames. How they got his picture - and such a revolting one, at that - he would never know.

What was more concerning was how they knew so much about him. Not just about his job, but his marital status as well? As if that was anybody's business.

Who was this "good authority?" He wanted to find them, torture them, and kill them very, very slowly.

Trying not to let the meaningless drivel of a poorly written corner shop rag ruin his Monday, Tom left his flat and headed out into Diagon Alley. He was still in a relatively good mood from learning that his latest submission to _Magical Theory Quarterly_ , in which he'd disproved a rather weak and pathetic theory of Dumbledore's concerning love and desire and other nonsense, had been published.

The Alley was unusually busy. He wouldn't have bothered going out at all, but he was meeting a new client that week, and had the need for a finely tailored suit. Madam Malkin, a very unpleasant and easily annoyed witch, had reluctantly agreed to help him at a discount, owing to his flawless charm and her ongoing business relationship with Borgin and Burke's (and their always-in-stock collection of illegal, self-adjusting undergarments).

What he expected when he entered Malkin's shop was her typical short temper and impatience. What he got was infinitely worse.

The bell above the door tinkled as he walked in, and Malkin immediately dropped the measuring tape she was holding over an elderly woman's head and bustled over to him, all smiles.

"Mister Riddle," she said in a low, quiet voice, her eyelashes fluttering like butterflies in the midst of seizures. "How lovely to see you again."

"Madam," he said in response.

"Your suit is all ready. It's in the back," she said, heading toward the other end of the shop and beckoning him to follow with a disturbingly suggestive wink.

She led him to one of the fitting rooms, pulled back the curtain, and gestured for him to enter. Stupidly, he did, and he noticed immediately that there was no suit to be found. From behind him he heard Malkin's low voice again, whispering into his ear.

"I heard you were looking for someone special," she said.

He was getting impatient now. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I think you do. Poor boy, all alone. You need someone to take care of you, don't you?"

He turned around to ask Malkin what the bloody hell was going on and the next thing he knew she was all over him.

_All_ over him.

He attempted to extricate himself, but this only made it worse.

"Now now, Mister Riddle," she said, her voice surely carrying out to the shop floor, "no need to be coy."

When she tried to lift his shirt he backed away forcefully, fighting the urge to curse her. "Madam," he breathed, clearly flustered, "I must- I must insist that you refrain from-"

"Making your day?"

When she reached for him again he retreated out to the floor, and she finally got the message.

Sighing wistfully, she disappeared into the store room and returned with his finished suit. He took it - rather roughly, as she was reluctant to let it go - threw his money on the counter, and hurried out of the shop as quickly as humanly possible.

* * *

It was that bloody article. It had to be.

Tom was no fool. He knew he was attractive, though he only cared about it whenever it was useful. It made the manipulation of certain targets much, much easier.

But that type of manipulation apparently came at a high cost.

Malkin was the first in what turned out to be a string of awkward, nightmarish encounters in the Alley. It seemed that every person he'd used his charm on, every woman he'd winked at or complimented or kissed the hand of, was suddenly much more interested in him than he ever needed them to be.

All because they knew he was single. At least, that was his theory.

The witch at the café, at whom he'd thrown his best smile to get free coffee almost daily, had given him an odd look when he'd gone in for lunch the next morning. Her eyes had followed him from behind the counter, and he'd felt like he was being stalked by a predator. Her face could only have been described as _hungry_.

Then another woman, one he'd persuaded to purchase a large amount of hanged men's hands at Borgin and Burke's, had found him in Flourish and Blotts that afternoon and thanked him for the good deal, adding that she would be more than happy to show him where she'd put all those hands when she'd taken them home.

The next evening he'd arrived at a small pub in Knockturn Alley expecting to see a crowd of his most loyal followers and allies. What met him instead was a very empty room, with the exception of one woman by the name of Walburga, who had apparently threatened to curse anyone else that entered the place, insisted she was the heir of a powerful pureblood family and could give him anything he wanted, and was "even willing to overlook the whole half-blood thing."

After the landlord in his building - the one he'd charmed so many times she hadn't asked for a sickle of rent in months - followed him the entire way up the stairs and to his door, offering to appease his apparent loneliness, he'd had enough.

He traveled to Croydon, where the _Witch Weekly_ headquarters was tucked away between two Muggle office buildings. The outside looked rather dingy, and there was no real indication that it was related to the wizarding world in any way.

The door opened to a flight of stairs, slick with water that was dripping from a sinister-looking stain on the ceiling, and at the top was a small hallway with a single black door. The rusted sign on the door said " _Witch Weekly_ , T. Misslethorpe, Editor."

Tom half expected a single desk covered in paper, maybe a chair, a shitty carpet. So when he opened the door to a massive, bustling office with fancy furniture, art covering the walls, and employees dressed in peak 1950s fashion, he was a bit taken aback.

"Can I help you?" asked a young woman that looked like a model.

"Yes, I'm looking for the editor. I would like to register a complaint about your most recent edition."

The woman narrowed her eyes and looked him up and down like a pureblood legacy Slytherin. "You couldn't have sent your complaint by owl?" she asked rather rudely.

"No," he said.

She raised an eyebrow. "I see. Wait here." She disappeared into the crowd.

Seconds later a tall, regal-looking man appeared out of nowhere. "Mister Riddle!" he exclaimed. "How nice of you to visit us here. I'm Tobias, the Editor. How can I help?"

"How do you know my name?" Tom demanded.

Tobias smiled. "We know everything about everyone, Mister Riddle. It's our job."

Tom didn't know how to respond to that other than by threatening to kill everyone in the building. With difficulty he said, "well... your latest edition featured an article on-"

"On Hogwarts graduates? Yes."

"Yes, and in the article I was described as-"

"'The most accomplished student Hogwarts has seen since Dumbledore himself,' yes."

"Er- yes. It also mentioned what I did for a living and that I was-"

"Single? Yes, I remember."

Tom tried with enormous difficulty not to reach for his wand. "Anyway, ever since that article I have had nothing but... trouble. I'm-"

"Being recognized everywhere you go?"

"Yes, and women are-"

"Giving you unwarranted attention? Yes, that can happen." The man smiled benignly, as if waiting for Tom to make his point.

"Please make it stop," Tom said lamely.

Tobias laughed. "I'm sorry, Mister Riddle, but we cannot control the actions of our readers. I assure you, we do not encourage them toward any specific sort of behavior, but I daresay it is your marital status that is giving you trouble more so than the article."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Tobias leaned in close and muttered, "get married. That'll shut them up." He wiggled his eyebrows, slapped Tom on the shoulder, said "nice meeting you, Mister Riddle!" and disappeared.

* * *

Tom did not leave his flat until Thursday, when he was scheduled to meet Borgin and Burke's new potential client, who had promised a wealth of enticing artifacts.

Her name was Hepzibah Smith. Smith had never met Tom before; surely she wouldn't be a problem. Unless she'd read that fucking article. Luckily she hadn't been given Tom's name, and had only been told that a representative from the shop would be visiting.

So here, he thought, he would be safe to use his charm the normal way, without disgusting repercussions.

He was wrong.

The house was stately, tucked away somewhere near Cambridge, and judging by the expensive, solid Diasro marble fountain occupying the front lawn, the prospects looked promising.

Tom knocked on the door and was immediately greeted by a small, elderly house elf with a spectacularly annoying voice. "Mistress is expecting you," she said simply, and ushered him inside.

The place was littered with objects of varying worth and significance, stuck here and there between stacks of books, an alarming number of tea sets, and moldy afghans. It was as if the contents of a museum had been dumped on top of an already-existing landfill and then shaken like a snow globe.

"Sir will come this way, please," said the tiny elf, ushering Tom into some sort of room that could have been the kitchen for all he could tell.

A large old woman in heavy makeup sat in the middle of the room, her bright yellow dress sprawled out around her, her giant wig making her look like she'd just escaped the French Revolution. She had a haughty face, which was probably very attractive at some distant point in the past. When she saw him her eyes bulged for a second and her lips curled into a disturbing smile as she took him in.

"Hel-lo," she sang, apparently satisfied with his presence.

He tried not to visibly shudder and fought the urge to flee that he'd developed over the last few days. This was what he was aiming for, was it not?

"Madam," he said, taking her hand, kissing it, and looking up at her with a perfectly timed smile.

"Aren't you just _delicious_ ," she purred, sipping from a tiny teacup and gesturing for him to sit down on a horrendous brown bear carcass that was apparently a sofa. "I daresay I might be convinced to give up _all_ of my treasures." She winked.

Tom felt nauseous. "Would there be anything specific you desire to present for appraisal, Madam?" he asked.

She giggled. "Desire? Oh, well, I was going to start with a few simple things, but..." She looked him up and down again, considering something. "Why not start from the top?" She waved at her elf, who apparently knew what she was talking about and disappeared into the hoard. "I know Mister Burke is aware of at least one of these items, as he sold it to me. But I doubt he knows about the other..."

The elf returned with two small boxes and handed them to Smith, who opened the first one slowly while staring at Tom with a hungry look. "This," she said, "is a family heirloom."

The first thing he noticed when the box was opened was a badger crest. His mind began to race as he took in the ornate gold handles and fine engraving of the small, ancient cup. Heart pumping fast, he muttered, "is that? Surely that's not-"

"Helga Hufflepuff's. Yes." She held out the box to show him, but as soon as he reached for the object she snapped the lid shut. "Not so fast," she teased, failing to notice his smile falter. "One more thing."

Unlike the first box, the second was wide and flat. From it she pulled out a long chain that held an ornate locket stamped with the letter "S."

"Slytherin's," she said, enjoying his now apparent interest.

As the locket dangled in front of him, all other thoughts were driven from his mind. He needed it. He had to have it. He would do anything to get it. _Anything_.

The loud snap of the second box closing brought him out of his momentary trance, and he took a deep breath and plastered a charming smile back on his face. "Madam, I must say, those items are quite impressive, if they're real." He was already listing off in his head the best and most efficient ways he could kill her right that second.

"Oh, they're real," she assured him in a simpering voice.

He was reaching for his wand-

"And they can be yours, if you play your cards right!"

"I'm sorry?"

She smiled - a hungry, _dangerous_ smile - and gave the boxes back to the elf, who disappeared again.

"All of this," she gestured around the room, "can be yours."

Tom could not hide his look of confusion. "If?"

"If..." she wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

He was beginning to think the offending _Witch Weekly_ article was not the problem after all. "Madam," he said, "what sort of arrangement-"

"Marry me," she unabashedly demanded.

Tom sat there, completely still, mouth open slightly.

All of his searching, all of those hours spent laboring over useless artifacts at the shop, had finally led him to real, undeniable rewards. He was not going to let them go. _Kill her now,_ he considered. _Marry her, then kill her. Come back and kill her later..._

"Or," Smith continued in a very different, business-like tone, "spend one night with me, and I will give you my most prized possessions."

No object, no matter how meaningful, was worth that price.

"I really should be going," Tom said in a hurry, all murder strategies driven from his mind by the overwhelming desire to flee. He stood and made his way toward the entrance.

"You'll be back, Mister Riddle," Smith called, her giggling following him out the door.

The worst part, he realized, standing on the front porch and trying to catch his breath, was the fact that, for a brief moment, he actually considered marrying a Hufflepuff.

* * *

Reluctantly Tom returned to work the next day only to find that things had gotten, somehow, worse.

He came in through the back of the shop and Borgin was waiting for him.

"Thank god you're here," he said, looking disheveled.

"What's going on?" Tom asked.

Borgin shook his head in confusion. "We've been busy all week. People keep coming into the shop and buying small things - trinkets and such - which I normally wouldn't mind, except I can barely keep up with the line of customers."

A bell rang out on the shop floor and Borgin sighed. "And the odd thing is," he continued, "they're all women."

Tom followed Borgin to the front and, sure enough, they were greeted by a long line of witches, many of whom were familiar customers of the typical rich pureblood variety. When they saw him they began to whisper excitedly. It was as if the entire crowd had been electrified.

Borgin didn't seem to notice that Tom was the cause of the fervor. "Take care of the line," he said. "I have to restock some things before we run out. Merlin's beard this is ridiculous." He returned to the back room, muttering to himself, leaving Tom alone with a shop full of women somewhere between ten and a hundred years older than him that looked as if they were ready to... pounce.

"May I help the next guest?" he asked reluctantly.

"You certainly may," said a familiar voice. A black-haired woman elbowed her way to the front, and with horror he realized who she was. "We never finished our conversation at the pub," she said, her voice as sultry as a movie star and about as appealing to him as fingers on a chalk board.

"Get out of here, Walburga! You're washed up!" someone yelled.

"Yeah!" said another woman. "Everyone knows that. Whole Black family."

Walburga drew her wand and aimed it menacingly at the entire crowd. "Who said that?" she demanded. Surprisingly, only a few of them backed away. Others got their own wands out.

The next few minutes were a nightmare of chaos, as fighting broke out in the crowd and hexes flew left and right. Tom retreated to the back, where Borgin apparently hadn't noticed the commotion while he was restocking.

"I'm taking the rest of the night off," Tom said hurriedly.

"Wait! You have to help me!" Borgin called after him as he flew out the door.

* * *

Diagon Alley had become a shark tank, and every time Tom walked out into the street, it was as if they smelled blood and sought him out, undressing him with their eyes and offering high status and money and large estates or anything else he might desire. At that point he'd have preferred actual sharks that wanted nothing more than to eat him.

So he stayed in his flat, refused to go to work, and did the only thing he could think to do: research what the hell kind of magic was causing this mess.

After only a few weeks he'd gone from attractive bachelor to crazed hermit, tacking pages of research to the walls and marking up all of his books with illegible, nonsensical notes about conspiracy theories.

One morning there was a knock at the door. Apprehensive, Tom readied his wand and peered through the peep hole. There was a man standing there, holding a package.

He opened the door the tiniest bit and inspected the hallway to make sure no one else was there.

"Yes?" he mumbled to the man, who was not fazed by his odd behavior.

"Package here for T. M. Riddle. You him?"

Tom opened the door a bit more. "Yes. Who's it from?"

The man ignored him. "Sign here," he mumbled, thrusting a piece of paper into Tom's face.

He signed the paper and handed it back, and the man shoved a benign-looking package wrapped in brown paper into his arms.

"What is this?" Tom asked.

The man shrugged. "How the hell would I know?" He walked away without another word.

Tom closed and locked all seven of the locks he'd put on the door, warded it, then sat down to open the package.

Inside the box was a single piece of parchment. On one side was taped a page ripped from a book that described a very simple, very dangerous spell that allowed the use of desire as a weapon.

On the other side was a note.

"Dearest Tom," it said, "Your move. Love, APWBD."

* * *

a/n: This is the last prompt I have for now! Thank you everyone for the comments and reads!


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